roHw^ III 'mmmfHismBimf'.'f'^ii^'f^- 




m-— 



-B.€Wt. 



Author 



Title 



Imprint. 



16 — 47372-2 OPO 



i 



w 
i 



mm 

mm 
mm 

If M^' 

'Mm 



IP 
IP 

i|i 
■ 



LIVES 



OF 



BLAINE K^p LOGAN 




JAMES G. BLAINE. 



JOHN A. LOGAN. 



THE PEOPLE'S EDITION— BOOK OF REFERENOE. 

JAMES G. BLAINE — HIS BIRTHPLACE AT WEST BROWNSVILLE, PA. — BOYHOOD COLLEGE 

LIFE TWO YEARS AT THE PHILADELPHIA BLIND INSTITUTION — EDITOR IN MAINE — 

THE HOMESTEAD AT AUGUSTA, ME. RELIGION — CAREER IN CONGRESS — SPEAKER 

OF THE HOUSE INGERSOLL'S SPEECH NOMINATING HIM FOR PRESIDENT 

IN 1S76 — ORIGIN OF THE TERM "PLUMED KNIGHX" WASHINGTON 

RESIDENCE SENATOR FROM MAINE — SECRETARY OF STATE — GAR- 
FIELD'S FRIEND EULOGY ON THE DEATH OF GARFIELD AS 

AN HISTORIAN "TWENTY YEARS OF CONGRESS" — THE ^ 

CONVENTION OF 1 884 — BALLOTS IN DETAIL — THE 
ELECTORAL VOTES — JUDGE WEST'S SPEECH — NO- 
TIFICATION BY CHAIRMAN HENDERSON ETC. 

JOHN A. LOGAN — WAR RECORD — PUBLIC ■ 

IIFE GRANT ON LOGAN — SKETCH 

OF MRS. LOGAN THE REPUB- 
LICAN PLATFORM OF 1 884. 



/3^^J 



COPYRIGHT, 

E. T. HAINES & CO., Publishers, 

712 SANSOM ST., PHILADELPHIA. 

1884. 



LIFE OF JAMES G. BLAINE. 



HIS BOYHOOD. 

JAMES G. BLAINE was born on the old Indian Hill Farm, 
in Washington County, Pennsylvania, January 31, 1S30. 
On this farm his great grandfather, the elder Neal Gillespie, 
had settled before the outbreak of the Revolution. 

The paternal great-grandfather of Mr. Blaine was a Penn-i 
sylvania colonel in the revolution. His home was in that set- 
tlement of the Scotch-Irish people — the Cumberland "Valley. It 
followed that the Blaines were all Presbyterians. It is told of 
Colonel Blaine that he was a friend of General Washington, who 
attributed the preservation of the ragged continentals from 
starving while at Valley Forge to the generous act of Colonel 
Blaine, while commissary-general of the Northern department 
of the army, in contributing and collecting large sums of money 
for the purchase of supplies. Ephraim L. Blaine, the grand- 
son of the revolutionary hero, lived in Washington County 
before 1842, at West Brownsville. In that year, as a Whig, he 
was elected to the office of prothonotary of the courts, and 
moved to Washington. Tradition says he lived in good style, 
held his head rather high, was much respected, and was loved 
more for a generosity and hospitality from which no one but 
himself felt any ill effects. The son of the prothonotary, now 
the Republican candidate for President of the United States, a 
few years ago, after a long absence, paid a visit to his birthplace, 
recognized the house at a glance, and promptly answered the 
salutations of his old friends — calling by their names or nick- 
names persons whom he had not seen for many years In his 
youth Blaine was tall and thin, and, on account of his shyness 
and reticence in their society, was not a general favorite with 
the village belles. He was quick, intelligent, read a good deal, 
and was fond of fun. 

A gentleman who recently visited Blaine's birthplace at 
West Brownsville, thus writes of it : — 

"See how the ivy climbs and expands 

Over this humble hermitage. 
And seems to cover with its httle hands 
The rough gray stones, as a child that stands 

Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age." 



Longfellow wrote these lines in his charming description of 
quaint "Old Saint Davids at Radnor," but how well do they 
apply to the ancient church in this village ; the little limestone, 
pile among the graves that hold so many of those who make 
the town worth writing about. It is the same "image of 
peace and rest" that the poet so well describes, and its sur- 
roundings are as striking and lonely as the poetical imagination 
could desire. 

I stood beside two old graves to-day in this village that are 
in the shadow of the little church that so quickly recalled 
to me Longfellow's beautiful lines. The marble that marked 
them was much newer than the mounds, and the surroundings 
impressed me with the thought that a dutiful and reverent son 
had years after, when means and opportunity came that were 
wanting when death called father and mother, placed a fitting 
monument to mark the spot where they slept. It is a plain, un- 
pretentious stone that marks these graves^ and it was the names 
only that attracted my attention. They were those of Ephraim 
L. Blaine and Maria Gillespie Blaine. 

"Who were these two people in life?" I asked of an old 
gentleman, who had wandered along with me to this quiet city 
where the dead sleep. 

"Why, they were the father and mother of James G. 
Blaine. 1 knew them both well. Eph Blaine and I went to 
school together. He was one of the founders of this town, and 
was 'squire here for many a year. He was elected prothonotary 
of the county in 1S42, and moved to Washington, the county 
seat. He married Maria, a daughter of old Neal Gillespie, the 
smartest man in this whole section, and from his people James 
Gillespie Blaine derives his middle name. The Gillespies were 
among the most prominent families in the State. The seal of 
nature's nobility was stamped upon them, one and all. The 
men were brave and stalwart; as strong in character, too, as 
they were stout of limb. The women were very handsome, 
and carried themselves as proudly as though the blood of a 
hundred earls were coursing through their veins. The beauty 
of old Mrs. Blaine, James' mother, passed into a proverb. Even 
In her decrepit age she preserved much of her early attract- 
iveness, and her eye was like a hawk's, as clear and flashing then 
as in the days of her budding womanhood. This was a pecu- 
liarity of her family, and she transmitted it to all her children. 
Neal Gillespie owned a good deal of land about here, and Eph 
Blaine built the brick house you see yonder on a portion of it 
after his marriage with Miss Gillespie. There their first child' 
James, was born in 1830. I remember him very well when he 
was a lad and used to jiaddle about on the river and make mud 
pies along its banks. He was a bright lad. 



NEVER TURNED HIS BACK ON FRIEND OR FOE. 

"I remember one little story about him, which I often 
heard in those days, and which is interesting as showing how 
truly, in his case, the child was father to the man. When he was 
but a little toddler, so to speak, some laborers were engaged 
digging a well on his father's premises. The future statesman 
was caught one morning peering down into the excavation, and 
one of the men, with the idea of frightening him and thus 
preventing him from again putting himself in danger, thrust his 
shovel toward him, and made all sorts of ugly faces. Jim ran 
away, but only to nurse his anger and await an opportunity for 
revenge. Venturing to the well a day or two after he had 
been driven away, he found the men working away at the bot- 
tom. Improving the opportunity, he seized a clod of earth and 
hurled it with all his little might full at the head of his unsus- 
pecting enemy, with the consolatory remark, 'There, take that.' 
Clod followed clod in fast succession, with accompanying exple- 
tives, until the men were fairly beside themselves with rage 
and the fear that the desperate child might take it into his head 
to use some of the stones lying about him as messengers of wrath 
more effective than mere lumps of earth. Their shouts, how- 
ever, brought his mother to the scene, and the little avenger was 
unceremoniously hustled off to the house. That was the old 
blood asserting itself. A Gillespie or a Blaine never turned his 
back upon friend or foe." 

MEMORIES. 

"Do the Blaines or any of the relatives own the old home- 
stead?" 

"No, indeed. It's long since passed into strange hands. 
There was little of either the Blaine or the Gillespie estate left 
when the settlement day came. The children all had to begin 
new. None of either family live about here now." 

There is much that is strange in the story that the old man 
told me, and much more that is interesting. We finished the 
talk beside the restless waters of the Monongahela, near which 
Mr. Blaine was born and his family lived for years. The little 
brick house doesn't stand more than forty rods from the river, 
and the old path which leads from the doorway that Blaine helped 
to make in childhood, is still there. The best boat on the river 
now bears his name, and the plain people love to talk of his 
having been born in their midst. It is a queer section of coun- 
try in which to have found the homes of two such families as 
the Blaines and the Gillespies. Both strong houses — both fond 
of the best things of this life. Both educated and brainy. 
Blaine sprang from Revolutionary stock. His great-grandfather 



was a distinguished officer in the Revolution. He was a rich 
man, and lived in Cumberland County, above Carlisle. He left 
James Blaine, the grandfather, and Ephraim Blaine, the father 
of the man of whom I am now writing, rich. The story goes 
that both spent their money in having a good time. The grand- 
faiher spent many years in Europe, and returned to this country 
only when he had become penniless. The first history he made 
in this country began early in the present century. After he was 
poor he left the rich and populous section of Carlisle, and moved 
into the then wilderness of the Youghiogheny region, and 
established a country store at the mouth of Ten Mile Run, in 
Gjcene County. He lived here but a short time when he came 
to Brownsville, with his wagon load of goods, and established 
a store, which he kept the remainder of his life. The Gillespie 
f:imily was then a rich and powerful family in the region. The 
strength of mind and character for which all the family were 
noted, is still a proverb in the region. The Monongahela river 
at this point separates the two counties of Fayette and Washing- 
ton. Brownsville is on the Fayette side and West Brownsville 
is on the Washington side. They are both quaint old towns, and 
wear the mark of many years. I don't suppose there are fifteen 
hundred people in both, and the houses straggle along the banks 
of the river on the lowlands, which are just high enough to keep 
them out of the reach of the overflow. This country was new — 
I might say wild — when the Blaines and the Gillespies came here. 
The rich treasures of the Youghiogheny region were floated 
down the Ohio river in rude keel boats, and the untold wealth 
in the rugged mountains was then unknown. Albert Gallatin 
usL'd to live in this country then, and his residence was but a few 
miles up the river from this point. But mighty changes have 
taken place since those days, when he so left his impress upon 
the finances and credit of this country that it can never be effaced. 

TWO STRONG FAMILIES. 

There seems to have been good feeling from the first between 
the Blaine and Gillespie families, and there seems to have been 
a special care to intermingle the family names as each son was 
born. The old man, whom I encountered in the first part of 
this story, told me that nearly every son in the Blaine family, as 
in the Gillespies, wore the family name or some part of his auto- 
graph. The Gillespie family .eemed to run more to girls than 
boys, and it seemed to be their good fortune to link their for- 
tunes with strong men. The daughter who was next in age to 
Maria, who married Ephraim L. Blaine, was wedded to the 
famous Tom Ewing, of Ohio, when he was a poor lawyer in 
Lancaster, Pa. Tiiat's how lie became an uncle of James G. 
Blaine, and the names of Blaine aud Ewing became joined. 



There is a tradition here that when old Tom Ewing was 
Secretary of the Interior, Blaine applied to him for a clerkship, 
and the old man sent him to Kentucky to earn an honest living 
teaching school. This association of the name of Ewing with 
that of Blaine has given rise to the story that the Ewing family 
of Ohio helped James G. Blaine to an education. I might as 
well destroy this fiction by telling the facts. 

A short drive brought me to Washington, the county seat of 
this county, and one of the first men I met was Major John H. 
Ewing, an old veteran now past four-score years. 

"I married the sister of Ephraim L. Blaine. He and I 
went to school together over in yonder college, and I knew him 
nearly all his life. He was a leader in the mischief of the school, 
and fo id of all the good things of this life. He was the hand- 
somest man I ever saw, and he had a wife that was a match for 
him. She was one of the noblest women I ever knew. She in- 
herited all the sterling traits of character and strength of mind 
for which the Gillespies were noted. So, you see, Blaine sprang 
from the best of stock on both sides. His father was justice of 
the peace over in West Brownville for a number of years, and 
afterwards prothonotary of the county. He was elected in 1842 
and came here to live. James G. was only about twelve years 
old then, and almost every middle aged man you meet on the 
streets here remembers all about him." 

blaine's college career. 

Young Blaine was thirteen when, in 1843, ^^ entered Wash- 
ington College. His college mates say he was easily leader of 
the three hundred students from all parts of the country. He 
became active in athletic sports, and, with exercise, his figure 
gained fullness and firmness. He was kind to the new boys and 
the youngsters, considerate of their freshness, and generous in 
giving them assistance and smoothing the rough places in their 
path. He became the arbiter of their disputes, and before the 
close of his college days he was universally looked up to and 
loved. 

During the campaign of 1844, when the Whigs had a "log 
cabin" near the college for headquarters, he was especially 
aggressive in his defense of Whig policy, and in active work. 
He was a brilliant student, and excelled alike in the sciences and 
mathematics. He was alwnys looked upon as very smart. The 
leading and preponderating quality of his mind was a remarkable 
memory. In this he far excelled every other member of his 
class. He was a great reader of history, and was so methodical 
in his arrangement of facts that he could in an instant present 
an array of them that would overwhelm any opponent. An 



8 

incident illustrating strongly this power is told of him when a 
little boy. His sister challenged him to a contest in naming the 
counties of the State of Pennsylvania. She named thern all, and 
he immediately named them and every county seat besides. 

ON THE ROAD TO FAME. 

Mr. A. M. Gow, of Washington, Pa., who was Blaine's 
classmate, speaks thus of his school-days : — 

"Yes, Blaine graduated in the class of '47, when he was 
only seventeen years old. I graduated in the same class. We 
were thrown a great deal together, not only in school, but in 
society. He was a great favorite in the best social circles in the 
town. He was not noted as a leader in his class. He could 
learn his lessons too easily. He had the most remarkable 
memory of any boy in school, and could commit and retain his 
lessons without difficulty. He never demonstrated in his youth, 
except by his wonderful memory, any of the great powers as a 
debater and thinker that he has since given evidence of." 

Dr. J. C. Cooper, of Philadelphia, another graduate of 
Washington College, in the class of '47, speaks of his classmate 
James G. Blaine, in terms of the highest praise. Dr. Cooper 
states that "in his college-days, young Blaine was a careful, 
thorough and conscientious student, though he had a gift of ac- 
quiring knowledge without much effort. He was ambitious, and 
there was one place where he could always be found, that was, at 
the head of his class." 

When a man has filled so large a place in the public eye as 
Mr. Blaine has, his early life seems a great way off. When you 
get where every other man you meet can tell you all about it, 
then you seem to see it in a different light and it leaves a far 
different impression upon your mind. Here, what seems to be 
to you when away traditions far in the distant past, appears like 
the recollections of yesterday. People cannot only tell you of 
his father and his grandfather, but of almost every phase of his 
life from boyhood up. The stories of his early struggles and 
triumphs are as vivid as those of his later years, and his name is 
closely associated with the lore of the country side. He left 
here soon after he graduated, but how little did he then think 
that his home would be made in the Northland and his fame and 
fortune won many miles away from the quaint old town where 
he grew up. It is a nice place for peace and rest. The people 
are contented and happy with their splendid educational institu- 
tions, their rich acres and plenty of money. He had close 
alliances here then that were likely to bring him back to stay. 



9 

1 

HIS RECOLLECTIONS OF YOUTH. 

In 1847, at the age of seventeen, he graduated at the head of 
a large class, many of whose members have also acquired wide 
renown. Mr. Blaine has always retained a warm affection for his 
alma mater and his native county. He has said that his pride 
and affection for both increase with years and reflection, and 
he recalls with pleasure the memory of the hardy pioneers of the 
county, their zealous celebrations on the Fourth of July and 
Washington's Birthday, and, speaking of one Fourth of July 
celebration in Brownsville in 1840, which was attended by 200 
Revolutionary veterans, Mr. Blaine has said that the modern 
cant and criticism which we sometimes hear about Washington 
not being a very great man would have been dangerous talk 
on that day and in that assemblage. Of this college he has 
said: "During my service of eighteen years in Congress I met 
a larger number of the alumni of Washington and Jefferson 
than of any single college in the Union." With Blaine's col- 
lege life his immediate connection with Pennsylvania, except 
for a short time spent as a teacher in Philadelphia, and a few 
years devoted to the study of Law, was ended, but his affection 
for his native State did not grow less with distance or time. 

After his graduation, Mr. Blaine went to B^ue Lick Springs, 
Ky., as a professor in the Western Military Institute. Nothing 
tests a man's back-bone more than the control of 450 half-grown 
boys. If he can maintain discipline and the regard and respect 
of his pupils, combine the instructor and the friend, he has 
succeeded as few beside the master at Rugby have done. 
Mr. Blaine even yet knows the boys of the Western Military 
Institute — their given names, their shortcomings and strong 
points. An officer of the Confederate service has narrated how 
coolly and bravely Mr. Blaine behaved during a bloody con- 
flict between the faculty of the school and the owners of 
Blue Lick Springs — when knives and revolvers were drawn. 
At Millersburg, twenty-nine miles away, was a young ladies' 
school, and here Blaine met Miss Harriet Stanwood, who 
belonged to an excellent Massachusetts family, and subsequently 
she became Mrs. Blaine. Miss Stanwood, for some romantic 
reason, refused to tell her future husband anything about her 
parentage or circumstances. When the school broke up she 
returned to her home in Maine. Mr. Blaine followed her; 
they were married, and the husband, to oblige his wife, became 
"Blaine, of Maine," though a more correct title would be 
Blaine, of Maine and of Pennsylvania. 

BLAINE AND THE BLIND. 

After leaving Blue Lick Springs, Mr. Blaine spent two years 
in the City of Philadelphia, teaching at The Pennsylvania Insti- 



10 

tution for the Instruction of the Blind. Mr. William Chapin, 
a genial old gentleman of over four score years, and the prm- 
cipal of the institution since 1849, when recently interrogated 
as to his recollection of Mr. Blaine, replied: 

"Yes, I remember young James G. Blame distinctly. He 
was principal teacher here on the boys' side for two years, and 
when he departed he left behind him not only universal regret 
at a serious loss to the institution, but an impression of his 
personal force upon the work and metnods, which survives the 
lapse of twenty years." 

The Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the 
Blind, at Twentieth and Race Streets, is the second place in 
which Mr. Blaine taught aftg: his graduation from Washington 
College. He rang the bell at the front door of the building 
one summer afternoon, in 1852, in answer to an advertisement 
for a teacher. "There were thirty or forty other applicants," 
said Mr. Chapin, "but his manner was so winning, and he 
possessed so many manifestly valuable qualities that I closed an 
engagement with him at once. He was married, and his wife 
and little son Walker came here with him. His qualities, which 
impressed me most deeply, were his culture, the thoroughness of 
his education and his unfailing self-possession. He was also a 
man of very decWled will, and was very much disposed to argu- 
ment. He was young then — only twenty-two — and was rather 
impulsive, leaping to a conclusion very quickly. But he was 
always ready to defend his conclusions, however suddenly he 
seemed to have reached them. We had many a familiar dis- 
cussion in this very room, and his arguments always astonished 
me by the knowledge they displayed of facts in history and 
politics. His memory was remarkable, and seemed to retain 
details which ordinary men would forget. 

Blaine's first book. 

"Now I will show you something that illustrates how 
thoroughly Mr. Blaine mastered anything he took hold of," 
said Mr. Chapin, as he took from a desk in the corner of the 
room a thick quarto manuscript book, bound in dark, brown 
leather, and lettered "Journal" on the corner. "This book 
Mr. Blaine compiled with great labor from the minute books 
of the Board of Managers. It gives an historical view of the 
institution from the time of its foundation up to the time of 
Mr. Blaine's departure. He did all the work in his own room, 
telling no one ot it till he left. Then he presented it, through 
me, to the Board of Managers, who were both surprised and 
gratified. I believe they made him a present of ^100 as a 
thank-offering for an invaluable work." 




1 ^ ^ £. 



12 



Indeed, this book, the first historical work of Mr. Blaine, 
is a model of its kind. On the title page, in ornamental pen- 
work, executed at that time by Mr. Chapm, is the inscription : 



Journal 

OF THE 

Pennsylvania Institution 

FOR THE 

INSTRUCTION OF THE BLIND, 

FROM ITS FOUNDATION. 

COMPILED FROM ORIGINAL RECORDS 

BY 

James G. Blaine. 

1834. 



A MODEL OF METHOD. 

The methodical character of the work is most remarkable. 
On the first page every abbreviation used in the book is entered 
alphabetically. The first entry reads: "On this and the four 
following pages will be found some notes in regard to the origin 
of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, 
furnished by I. Francis Fisher, Esq." From this page to the 
i88th, in which is the last entry made by Mr. Blaine, every line 
is a model of neatness and accuracy. On every page is a wide 
margin. At the top of the margin is the year, in ornamental 
figures. Below it is a brief statement of what the text contains 
opposite that portion of the marginal entry. Every year's record 
closes with an elaborate table, giving the attendance of mem- 
bers of the board. The last pages of the book are filled with 
alphabetical lists of officers of the institution and statistical 
tables, compiled by the same patient and untiring hand. One 
of the lists is that of the "principal teachers," No. 13 is fol- 
lowed by the signature "James G. Blaine, from August 5, 1852, 
to" — and then, in an other hand, the record is completed with 
the date November 23, 1854. 

"I think that the book," remarked Mr. Chapin, "illustrates 
the character of the man in accurate mastery of facts and orderly 
presentation of details. We still use it for reference, and Mr. 
Frank Battles, the assistant principal, is bringing the record 
down to the present time." 



13 

"I recall one incident," Mr. Chapin continued, "which 
indicates Mr. Blaine's mode of discipline, and shows, too, that 
he was in those days somewhat impulsive. It was one of his 
duties to take charge of the boys at breakfast, and sometimes 
there would be a few sleepy laggards. One morning a whole 
room full of boys, five or six of them, failed to appear. Mr. 
Blaine quietly walked up stairs and locked them in. The boys 
had a screw-driver and they unfastened the lock ; but by the 
time they reached the breakfast room the tables had been cleared. 
'You can have no breakfast,' was the teacher's annotincement. 
The boys thereupon declared that they wouldn't go into Mr. 
Blaine's classes. He reported them to me. Although I thought 
it perhaps a little severe to deprive them of breakfast, I felt 
obliged to sustain Mr. Blaine, and told them to go to their class 
rooms as usual. They still refused, and I suspended them for 
the day. The next morning they rose in time for breakfast, at- 
tended classes, and the little rebellion was over. 

"Mr. Blaine taught mathematics, in which he excelled, 
and the higher branches. His wife was universally beloved, and 
often read aloud to the pupils. When he went away to become 
editor of the Y^tnnthtc Journal, we felt that we had lost a man 
of large parts and we watched his upward career with great 
interest. Yes, indeed, we're all for Blaine here. He has called 
here a number of times when he stopped in the city on his way 
to and from Washington. The last time he was here he heard 
with great interest of the progress of D. D. Wood, the blind 
organist at St. Stephen's Church, who was one of his pupils, 
and recalled Mr. Wood's proficiency in mathematics." 
A pupil's recollections. 

Three persons now holding positions in the institution, 
Michael M. Williams, William McMillan and Miss Maria Cor- 
many, were pupils under Mr. Blaine. Mr. Williams said: 
"Everybody loved Mr. Blaine and his wife. Both were always 
ready to do anything for our amusement in leisure hours, and 
we had a great deal of fun, into which they entered heartily. 
I think that Mrs. Blaine read nearly all of Dicken's works aloud 
to us, and Mr. Blaine used to make us roar with laughter by 
reading out of a book entitled 'Charcoal Sketches.'" Mr. 
Williams led the visitor to a large room at the right of the main 
entrance to the building, separated by folding doors from an- 
other room, and added: "In the evenings he used to throw 
those doors open and sit there under the gaslight, reading aloud 
to both the boys and girls. Then we would wind up with a 
spelling bee. Sometimes Mr. Blaine would give out the words 
aud sometimes one of the big boys would do it, while Mr. Blaine 
stood up among the boys. Then we would have great fun trying 
to 'spell the teacher down.' " 



W~"!iim-'f , 







15 

THE MAINE EDITOR AND POLITICIAN. 

It was in 1853 that Mr. Blaine went to Portland, Me., and 
became editor of the Portland Advertiser and the Kennebec 
Journal. A great journalist was lost when he entered public life. 
He has himself said that he never hoped to attain in his writing 
anything like the excellence of style reached by him in the in- 
tense excitement of public speaking. The truth is, he is a master 
of both arts. His first reputation as a public speaker was ac- 
quired in the Fremont campaign of 1856. In 1858 he was 
elected a member of the Maine Legislature. He was re-elected 
three times, and in 1861 and 1862 he was chosen speaker of the 
House. In 1863, at the height of the civil war, he was elected 
to Congress, beginning a service in the National House of Rep- 
resentatives which lasted fourteen years. He became the leader 
of the Republican side of the House as he became the leader of 
men wherever he went. It was in the beginning of his second 
term that he began to make himself felt. None of the younger 
members had been on more cordial or confidential terms with 
Mr. Lincoln than the new member from Maine. Towards the 
expiration of Mr. Lincoln's first term, Mr. Blaine was the person 
with whom the President constantly conferred in regard to 
political movements in Maine. Ward H. Lamon, Lincoln's law 
partner, was present at a conference when Mr. Lincoln requested 
Mr. Blaine to go to Maine and watch the movements of the 
President's opponents. The acquaintance between Lincoln and 
Blaine had begun in Illinois, during the Douglas campaign in 
1858, and at that early time the Maine editor had predicted in 
the columns of his paper that Lincoln would be defeated for 
senator by Douglas, but that he would beat Douglas for president 
in i860. A copy of this prophecy Mr. Lincoln carried in his 
memorandum book long after he had been inaugurated as presi- 
dent. In i860, as delegate to the Chicago Convention, Mr. 
Blaine had been almost the only New England man who had 
supported Mr. Lincoln from the start, and it is not too much to 
say that it was Mr. Blaine's early and firm stand for Lincoln 
which opened the way to the first nomination of the first martyr 
President. 

HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAREER. 

Mr. Blaine had been a representative hardly three years be- 
fore he had won an equal rank with the ablest of the members. 
It was a body strong in strong men — Thad. Stevens, Ben. Butler, 
Bingham, Boutwell, Conkling, Dawes, George N. Julian, R. B. 
Hayes and others made the Republican delegation a tower of 
strength. In the National House of Representatives Mr. Blaine 
followed the same even and upward path of progress which he 



16 

had trodden from his entrance in college to his last day of service 
in the Maine Legislature. He was a member of the Thirty- 
eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, Forty-first, Forty-second, Forty- 
third and Forty-fourth Congresses. He was Speaker of the House 
during the Forty-first, Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses. 

Upon assuming the chair as Speaker of the House in 1S69, 
Mr. Blaine made the following address : 

Gentlemen of the House of Representatives : I thank you profoundly 
for the great honor which you have just conferred upon me. The graiifica- 
lion which this signal mark of your confidence brings to me finds its only 
drawback in the diffidence with which I assume the weighty duties devolved 
upon me. Succeeding to a chair made illustrious by the services of such 
eminent statesmen and skilled parliamentarians as Clay, and Stevenson, and 
Polk, and Winthrop, and Banks, and Grow, and Colfax, I may well distrust 
my ability to meet the just expectations of those who have shown me such 
marked partiality. But relying, gentlemen, on my honest purpose to perform 
all my duties faithfully and fearlessly, and trusting in a large measnre to the 
indulgence which I am sure you will always extend to me, I shall hope to 
retain, as I have secured your confidence, your kindly regard and your gener- 
ous support. 

The Forty-first Congress assembles at an auspicious period in the history 
of our Government. The splendid and impressive ceremonial which we have 
just witnessed in another part of the Capitol appropriately symbolizes the 
triumphs of the past and the hopes of the future. A great chieftain, whose 
sword at the head of gallant and victorious armies saved the repul^lic from 
dismemberment and ruin, has been fitly called to the highest civic honor 
which a grateful people can bestow. Sustained by a Congress that so ably 
represents the loyalty, the patriotism, and the personal worth of the nation, 
the President this day inaugurated will assure to the country an administra- 
tion of purity, fidelity and prosperity ; an era of liberty regulated by law, and 
of law thoroughly inspired with liberty. 

Congratulating you, gentlemen, upon the happy auguries of the day, and 
invoking the gracious blessing of Almighty God on the arduous and respon- 
sible duties before you, I am now ready to take the oath of office and enter 
upon the discharge of the duties to which you have called me. 

For the speakership he had nearly every requirement 
that can be demanded. Before he took up the gavel he 
had long parliamentary experience, and, before experience, he 
had quickness, firmness, knowledge of the rules, of men and 
affairs. His assumption of the office was merely another trial 
of the powers which had been equal to every occasion, and they 
did not fail him now. On July 10, 1876, Mr. Blaine was ap- 
pointed United States Senator from Maine, to fill the vacancy 
caused by the resignation of Lott M. Morrill, who had been 
api)ointed Secretary of the Treasury, and he was subsequently 
elected for the unexpired term, and for the ensuing term which 
expired March 3, 1883. 

His congressional career embraced the most trying period 
of his country's history, the sombre years of the rebellion, the 
reconstruction period and the perilous time when the election 



17 

of President Hayes aroused an apparently triumphant Democratic 
party almost to the verge of madness. A good example of Mr. 
Blaine's powers as a debater is found in a speech delivered in the 
Senate, April 14, 1879, when an effort was made by the Demo- 
crats to strike out the words from a section of the Revised Stat- 
utes, which provided for the use of soldiers to keep peace at the 
polls. In reply to the charge that the soldiers were used to in- 
timidate Southern voters, Mr. Blaine said: 

" Ai.d the entire South has one thousand one hundred and 
fifty-five soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress and destroy the 
liberties of fifteen million people ! In the Southern States there 
are one thousand two hundred and three counties. If you dis- 
tribute the soldiers there is not quite one for each county. If 
you distribute them territorially there is one for every seven hun- 
dred square miles of territory, so that if you make a territorial 
distribution I would remind the honorable Senator from Dela- 
ware, if I saw him in his seat, that the quota for his state would 
be three, 'One ragged sergeant and two abreast,' as the old 
song has it. That is the force ready to destroy the liberties of 
Delaware." « 

BLAINE, THE STATESMAN. 

An examination of the Congressional Record v^'WX show how 
far astray is the popular idea of Mr. Blaine's congressional career 
and how much greater he was as a statesman than as a politician. 
His debates covered a wide range of the most complicated sub- 
jects, and show him to have been sound in his financial views, 
practical always and liberal in his political views. When, in 
December, 1864, Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, introduced a 
bill in the House to determine the value of legal tender notes, 
and to compel all persons to take the notes at their face value, 
Mr. Blaine was the member to expose the absurdity of the at- 
tempt. "The bill," he said, "aims at the impossible. You 
cannot make a gold dollar worth less than it is by congressional 
declaration." 

Mr. Blaine invented the word "Stalwart," but no one was 
quicker than he to advise keeping hands off the South after the 
close of the war. 

In a speech upon the financial condition of the country, de- 
livered in the House, in March, 1868, Mr. Blaine said: 

"Nor do I see how any gentleman can consistently propose 
an inflation of the currency in the face of an express and solemn 
pledge to the contrary by Congress. * * * If we were ever 
so eager to pay off our five-twenty's in greenbacks we are actually 
stopped by the four hundred million dollars pledge. If we dis- 
regard that pledge we might just as well trample upon others and 



18 

take a short cut at once to repudiation and national bankruptcy. 
The policy which I advocate is to bring our entire currency in 
due season, without haste, without rashness, without contraction, 
without financial convulsion, up to the specie standard. 

June 23 1868, Mr. Blaine made an elaborate argument in 
opposition to the proposition to impose a tax upon Government 
bonds He was one of the most conspicuous- and able ot the 
opponents of the importation of Chinese labor. His ablest 
speeches in the Senate were, probably, those made during the 
Geneva award debate, when he successfully crossed arms with 
the great legal athletes of the Senate Chamber. 

In the meantime, Mr. Blaine's popularity and prominence 
had made him a formidable candidate for the presidency. At 
the Republican National Convention, held at Cincinnati in 1876, 
he was by far the most popular candidate, but, as is so often the 
case, under such circumstances, the combinations effected by the 
opposition were too strong to be withstood, and Rutherford B. 
Hayes received the nomination on the seventh ballot. 

The following is Col. Ingersoll's speech, nominating Mr. 
Blaine: 

The Republicans of the United States demand, as their leader in the great 
contest of 1876, a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well 
known and approved political opinions. They demand a statesman. They 
demand a reformer after, as well as before, the election. They demand a 
politician in the highest, broadest, best sense — a man of superb moral courage. 
They demand a man acquainted with public affairs; with the wants of the 
people; with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the demands of 
the future. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the relations 
of this Government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man 
well versed in the powers, duties and prerogatives of each and every depart- 
ment of this Government. They demand a man who will sacredly preserve 
the financial honor of the United States; one who knows enough to know 
that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of its people; one 
who knows enough to know that all the financial theories in the world connot 
redeem a single dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money 
must be made, not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know 
that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money 
and have the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it. 

The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that 
prosperity and resumption, when they come, must come together; that when 
they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields; 
hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning wheel; hand in hand 
past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in 
hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire ; greeted and grasped by the 
countless sons of toil. 

This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot make it by 
passing resolutions in a political convention. The Republicans of the United 
States want a man who knows that this Government should protect every citizen 
at home and abroad ; who knows that any Government that will not defend 
its defenders, and protect its protectors is a disgrace to the map of the world. 
They demand a man who believes in the eternal separation and divorcement 



19 



of church and school. They demand a man whose political reputation is spot- 
less as a star ; but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certifi- 
cate of moral character signed by a Confederate Congress. The man who 
has, in full, heaped, and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifications, 
is the present grand and gallant leader of the Republican party — James 
G. Blaine. 

Our countr\', crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its 
first century, asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of the future; 
asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man who has the 
grandest combination of heart, conscience and brain beneath her flag — such 
a man is James G. Blaine. For the Republican host led by this intrepid man, 
there can" be no defeat. This is a grand year — a year filled with the recollec- 
tions of the Revolution; filled with proud and tender memories of the past — 
with the sacred legends of Liberty — a year in which the sons of Freedom 
will drink from the fountains of enthusiasm — a year in which the people call 
for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the 
field — a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of 
treason the tongue of slander ; for the man who has snatched the mask of 
Democracy from the hideous face of Rebellion ; for the man who, like an 
intellectunl athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers, 
and who is still a total stranger to defeat. Like an armed warrior, like a 
plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American 
Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads 
of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor. For the Re- 
publican party to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should 
desert their general upon the field of battle. James G. Blaine is now and has 
been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican party. I 
call it sacred, because no human being can stand beneath its folds without 
becoming and without remaining free. 

Gentlemen of the Convention : In the name of the great Republic, the 
only Republic that ever existed upon this earth ; in the name of all her de- 
fenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiers living ; in 
the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and in the name of 
those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Andersonville and 
Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers, Illinois— Illinois nominates 
for the next President of this Country, that prince of parliamentarians, that 
leader of leaders, James G. Blaine. 

THE BALLOTS IN DETAIL IN 1 876. 



Candidates. 


ISt 

Ballot. 


2d 

Ballot. 


3d 
Ballot. 


4th 

B.llot. 


Sth 
Ballot. 


6th 
Ballot. 


7th 
Ballot. 




298 

114 

93 

111 

63 

64 

U 

3 

1 


296 

113 

99 

124 

58 

(1 

11 

3 

1 


293 

121 

90 

113 

68 

67 

2 
1 


292 

126 

84 

108 

71 

68 

2 
3 


286 

114 

82 

95 

69 

104 

2 
3 


308 

111 

81 

85 

50 

113 

2 

4 


351 




21 


Conkling 








Hayes 


384 










Washburne 





Aeain, in the National Republican Convention of iSSo, 
James G. Blaine was one of the popular candidates, ranking 



20 

second to General Grant in the first thirty-five ballots of the 
convention ; in the thirty-sixth the Blaine votes were transferred 
to James A. Garfield, who received at that ballot 399 votes, and 
was declared the candidate of his party. 

THE BALLOTS IN DETAIL IN 1880. 



Ballots. 



O 



n 



o 



f 1st.... 
I 2d..., 
I 31.... 

4th... 

oth.. 

Glh.. 

7th... 

8th... 

9th.. 

10th. 

11th. 

]2lh. 

13th. 

14th. 

loth. 

16th. 

17th. 
L 18th. 



, • r 19th. 
20th. 
2M . 
22d.. 
23d.. 
24. h. 
25lh. 
26th. 
27th. 
28th., 



f 29th. 

30th. 
1 31st.. 
I 32d.. 
'! 33d.. 

34th. 
I 35th. 
t 36th. 



304 
305 
305 
305 
305 
305 
305 
306 
308 
305 
305 
304 
305 
305 
309 
306 
303 
305 

305 
308 
305 
305 
304 
305 
302 
303 
306 
307 

305 
306 
308 
309 
309 
312 
313 
306 



284 
282 
282 
281 
281 
280 
281 
284 
282 
282 
281 
283 
285 
285 
281 
283 
284 
283 

279 
276 
276 
275 
275 
279 
281 
280 
277 
279 

278 
279 
276 
270 
276 
275 
257 
42 



90 
91 

96 
93 
96 
97 
97 
93 
94 
93 
93 
91 

116 
120 
118 
117 
110 
107 
99 
3 



1 
1 
1 
1 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 

2 
2 
1 
1 
1 

17 

50 

399 



21 

HIS RELATIONS WITH GARFIELD. 

Again Mr. Blaine was to perform the second martyr Presi- 
dent a service greater in degree than that which he had done for 
Lincoln at the second National Convention of the Republican 
party, but similar to it. In Lincoln's case, he opened the way 
to the nomination. He made the nomination of Garfield pos- 
sible by throwing his strength to him at the proper moment. 
And his relations with Garfield were to be closer than his rela- 
tions with Lincoln, confidential as they had been, in proportion 
as his services to Garfield in iSSowere made greater than his 
services to Lincoln in i860 by his increased influence and promi- 
nence. It remained for Mr. Blaine to do almost as much to 
elect Garfield as he had done to nominate him by his apprecia- 
tion of the importance of the tariff question, and by exposing » 
upon the stump the dangers of Free Trade at a moment in the 
campaign when the Republican horizon was darkest with clouds. 
Mr. Garfield was elected in November. Before the first of De- 
cember he had invited Mr. Blaine to enter his Cabinet as Sec- 
retary of State. Mr. Blaine, after due consideration, signified 
his acceptance. He wrote that he accepted not for the honor 
of the promotion, but because he might be useful to the country, 
the party and to the President, the responsible leader of the 
party and the great head of the Government. "Your adminis- 
tration," he said, "must be made brilliantly successful and strong 
in the confidence and pride of the people," and he concluded 
as follows: 

" I accept it as one of the happiest circumstances connected 
with this affair that in allying my political fortunes with yours — 
or rather, for the time, merging mine in yours — my heart goes 
with my head, and that I carry to you not only political support, 
but personal and devoted friendship. I can but regard it as 
somewhat remarkable that two men of the same age, entering 
Congress at the same time, influenced by the same aims and 
cherishing the same ambitions, should never for a single moment 
in eighteen years of close intimacy have had a misunderstanding 
or a coolness, and that our friendship has steadily grown with 
our growth and strengthened with our strength. 

"It is this fact which has led me to the conclusion embodied 
in this letter, for, however much, my dear Garfield, I might ad- 
vise you as a statesman, I would not enter your Cabinet if I did 
not believe in you as a man and love you as a friend." 

BLAINE, SECRETARY OF STATE. 

The brief administration of President Garfield was remark- 
able for its promise of broad statesmanship. For many years 
Congress and the entire Government had been busy in making 



22 

war, in restoring peace, and in paying the immense war debt. I 

It was all the United States could do to preserve the Union, and 
other nations were profiting by the neglect of this country to 
properly cultivate its foreign relations. England had absorbed 
our commerce and directed into her own coffers the trade of the 
South American countries. And now, under the auspices of the 
French Republic, under the direction of a citizen of France 
and backed by continental capitalists, active preparations had 
been made to construct an interoceanic canal across the Isthmus 
of Panama, while, under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, the 
United States was practically powerless to take any steps for the 
protection of her own interests. At the same time at home a 
more sagacious Southern policy was demanded — a policy which 
would promote the material reconstruction of the bouth, there- 
tofore neglected for the sake of pulitical reconstruction. 

For some of the acts of Garfield's adminstration his Sec- 
retary of State has been unjustly held accountable. Mr. Murat 
Halstead narrates that President Garfield told him Blaine had 
remained scrupulously within the line of his duties as Secretary 
of State ; that he, the President, was responsible for the appoint- 
ment of Judge Robertson as collector of New York. But with 
the hearty co-operation and support of the President, Mr. Blaine 
outlined that "spirited foreign pojicy" which was to be cut 
short by the President's death. The Southern policy of the 
Administration would have been to cultivate cordial relations 
between the different sections of the country, and, by thus pro- 
moting the flow southward of Northern capital, to assist the 
development of the Southern States. Mr. Blaine had great faith 
in the future of the South. On one occasion he said: 

" In reconstructing the South we made the same mistake the 
British Government is making with the Irish. If we had made 
a Government donation of fifty million dollars for the purpose 
of constructing a railway from Charleston to the southern end 
of California, and spent every dollar of it between Charleston 
and the Mississippi River in the first three years following the 
war, the problem of reconstruction would have solved itself; the 
people would have had business interests, instead of politics, to 
occupy their attention. I believe that within ten years the ma- 
terial increase in the Southern States, east of the Mississippi, 
will equal, if it does not surpass, that of the Northwestern States, 
west of tiie Mississippi." 

In Virginia Mr. Blaine has invested twenty-eight thousand 
dollars in one railway, and inside of one year sold his interest 
for one hundred thousand dollars, and besides he owned coal 
and lumber lands in Georgia and Alabama. 



23 

THE SPIRITED FOREIGN POLICY. 

Mr. Blaine has defined the intent of the foreign policy ol 
President Garfield's administration to be, first, to bring about 
peace and prevent future wars in North and South America; 
second, to cultivate such friendly commercial relations with all 
American countries as would lead to a large increase in the ex- 
port trade (jf the United States by supplying those fabrics in 
which we are abundantly able to compete wiih the manufactur- 
ing nations of Europe. It was for the purpose of promoting 
peace on the Western Hemisphere that it was determined to in- 
vite all the independent governments of North and South 
America to meet in a peace conference at Washington on March 
15, 1882. The project' met with cordial approval in South 
America, and, had it been carried out, would have raised the 
standard of civilization, and possibly, by opening South Ameri- 
can markets to our manufactures, would have wiped out one hun- 
dred and twenty million dollars balance of trade which Spanish 
America brings against us every year. The invitations to this 
important conference were subsequently sent out by President 
Arthur, but in a short time they were recalled, after some of the 
countries had actually accepted them. It was to pave the way 
toward a peace conference that Wm. Henry Trescott was sent as 
a special envoy to Peru, and, under instructions approved by 
President Arthur in the hope of obtaining an amicable settle- 
ment of the differences between the belligerents. Secretary 
Blaine's instructions to General Hurlbut, United States Minister 
to Peru, specially cautioned the minister against committing his 
government to any line of action in regard to the Cochet and 
Landreau claims against the Peruvian Government by the citizens 
of this country, and, again he wro e warning Mr. Hurlbut against 
lending his legation's influence to the Credit Industriel of France, 
the Peruvian Company of New York or any other schemes for 
reorganizing the finances of Peru. In Secretary Blaine's cor- 
respondence with Lord Granville in the early Summer of 1881, 
he set forth the position of the United States as holding the 
right to feel and express deep interest in the distressed condition 
of Peru, with which this country had maintained cordial rela- 
tions for many years, and while with equal friendliness to Chili, 
the United States would not interpose to deprive her of fair ad- 
vantages of military success, this country could not regard with 
unconcern the destruction of Peruvian nationality, a movement 
which threatened the liberal civilization of all America. 

Of equal importance with the cultivation of friendly and 
commercial relations with the South American coi^ntries was and 
still is the necessity of taking some steps toward protecting the 
interests of the United States involved in the construction of a 



24 

canal across the Isthmus of Panama. In Secretary Blaine's in- 
structions to Mr. James Russell Lowell, Minister to England, is 
the following summary of the changes in the Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty of 1S50 necessary to meet the views of the United States 
Government: tt • j 

''First. Every part of the treaty which forbids the United 
States fortifying the canal and holding the political control of it 
in conjunction with the country in which it is located to be 
cancelled. 

''Second. Every part of the treaty in which Great Britain 
and the United States agree to make no acquisition of territory 
in Central America to remain in full force." 

The admirable and forcible chain of reasoning by which 
Mr. Blaine led to these conclusions forced the English news- 
papers to admit that he had made out a good case upon British 
precedents, and that the right of the United States to control 
the Panama Canal was stronger and the necessity of such control 
greater than the right and necessity of England to control the 
Suez Canal. 

The shooting of President Garfield interrupted the plans of 
his administration. His death put an end to them for the time. 
The succession of President Arthur was followed by the retire- 
ment of Mr. Blaine and other members of the Garfield Cabinet, 
Mr. Blaine retired to Augusta, to devote himself to the prepara- 
tion of "Twenty Years of Congress," the first volume of which 
has since been given to the public, and evidences the fairness, 
justness and impartiality of his mind, his vast and profound ac- 
quaintance with men and affairs and his ability as a master of the 
English language. His great eulogy upon President Garfield, 
delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives at Wash- 
ington, March i, 18S2, has already taken its proper place in 
American literature. The Arthur administration proceeded 
quietly and slowly to undo the work of its predecessor and re- 
verse the policy which it first adopted, and the necessity of a 
spirited foreign policy, which only means a policy that will pro- 
tect the interests of the United States, still exists. 

EULOGY ON GARFIELD. 

Mr. Blaine's oration on the death of President Garfield was 
delivered on the twenty-seventh day of February, 18S2, in the 
Hall of the House of Representatives, at Washington, before 
President Arthur, the Judges of the Supreme Court, the members 
of the House and Senate, and many distinguished guests. Our 
limited space will permit us to give but a brief extract : 

Mr. President: For the second time in this generation the great de- 
partments of tlTe Government of the United States are assembled in the 
Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a murdered President. 



25 

Lincoln fell at the close of a might) struggle in which the passions of men 
hail been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of his great life added but 
another to the lengtliened succession of horrors which had marked so many 
lintels with the blood of the first born. Garfield was slain in a day of peace, 
when brother had been reconciled to brother, and when anger and hate had 
been banished from the land. Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of 
murder, if he will show it as as it has been exhibited where such example 
was last to have been looked for, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, 
the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate. Let him draw, 
rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; not so much an example 
of human nature in its depravity and m its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal 
bemg, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character. 



On the morning of Saturday, July second, the President was a con- 
tented and happy man — not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boy- 
ishly happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, 
in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of 
leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and 
gratulalory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration 
was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow 
Stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been 
safely passed; that trouble lay behind him and not before him ; that he was 
soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which 
had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him ; that he was 
going to his alma mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young 
manhood, and to exchange greetmgs with those whose deepening interests 
had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon 
his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his 
countrymen. 

Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this 
world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a 
happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him ; no slightest premonition 
of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. 
One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peace- 
fully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed 
to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. 

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in deaths For no cause, in the 
very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he 
was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspira- 
tions, its victories, into the visible presence of death — and he did not quail. 
Not alone for the one short momept in which, stunned and dazed, he could 
give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly 
languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently 
borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. 
What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell — what 
brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, 
warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! 
Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a 
cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil 
and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys 
not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair, young daughter ; 
the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day 
and every day rewarding a father's love and care ; and in his heart the eager, 
rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great dark- 



26 

ness ! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with 
instant, profound, and universal sympathy. , .. , , 

Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation s love, 
enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy 
could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wme-press alone. With 
unfalteiin<T front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave oi 
life. Abo'Ve the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice 
of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree. 

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The 
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and 
he begged to be taken from its prison walls ; from its oppressive, stifling air ; 
from its homelessness and hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great 
nation bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to 
die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of 
its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling 
breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its 
fair sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shore- 
ward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red cloud of even- 
ing, arching low to the horizon ; on the serene and shining pathway of the 
stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the 
rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the 
receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and 
felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. 

Blaine's regard for his adopted state. 

Mr. Blaine's regard for his adopted State — Maine — is shown 
by his answer to reflections cast upon her by Mr. S. S. Cox, in 
the House, June 2, 1864: 

If there be a State in this Union that can say with truth that her Federal 
connection confers no special benefit of a material character, that State is 
Maine. And yet, sir, no State is more attached to the Federal Union than 
Maine. Her affection and her pride are centered in the Union, and God 
knows she has contributed her best blood and treasure without stint in sup- 
porting the war for the Union; and she will do so to the end. But she resents, 
and I, speaking for her, resent the insinuation that she derives any undue 
advantage from Federal legislation, or that she gets a single dollar that she 
does not pay back * * * I have spolcen in vindication of a State that is 
as independent and as proud as any within the limits of the Union. I have 
spoken for a people as high-toned and as honorable as can be found in the 
wide world — ^many of them my constituents who are as manly and as brave 
as ever faced the ocean's storms. So long, sir, as I have a seat on this floor, 
the State of Maine shall not be slandered by the gentleman from New York, 
or by gentlemen from any other State. 

HIS remarkable memory. 

Mr. Blaine's knowledge of facts, dates, events, men in our 
history, is not only remarlcable but almost unprecedented- In 
his college days, he was noted for his early love of American 
history, and for his intimate knowledge of its details. That field 
of reading has been enlarged and cultivated, in all his subsequent 
years, until it would be difficult to find a man in the United 
States who can, on the instant, without reference to books or 



26 

ness ! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with 
instant, profound, and universal sympathy. 

Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation's luve, 
enshrined ia the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy 
could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With 
unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of 
life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice 
of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree. 

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The 
stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and 
he begged to be taken from its prison walls ; from its oppressive, stifling air; 
from its homelessness and hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great 
nation bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to 
die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of 
its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling 
breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its 
fair sails, whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves, rolling shore- 
ward to break and die beneath the noonday sun ; on the red cloud of even- 
ing, arching low to the horizon ; on the serene and shining pathway of the 
stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the 
rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the 
receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and 
felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. 

Blaine's regard for his adopted state. 

Mr. Blaine's regard for his adopted State — Maine — is shown 
by his answer to reflections cast upon her by Mr. S. S. Cox, in 
the House, June 2, 1864: 

If there be a State in this Union that can say with truth that her Federal 
connection confers no special benefit of a material character, that State is 
Maine. And yet, sir, no State is more attached to the Federal Union than 
Maine. Her affection and her pride are centered in the Union, and God 
knows she has contributed her best blood and treasure without stint in sup- 
porting the war for the Union ; and she will do so to the end. But she resents, 
and I^speaking for her, resent the insinuation that she derives any undue 
advantage from Federal legislation, or that she gets a single dollar that she 
does not pay back * * * I have spoken in vindication of a State th.at is 
as independent and as proud as any within the limits of the Union. I have 
spoken for a people as high-toned and as honorable as can be found in the 
wide world— many of them my constituents who are as manly and as brave 
as ever faced the ocean's storms. So long, sir, as I have a seat on this floor, 
the State of Maine shall not be slandered by the gentleman from New York, 
or by gentlemen from any other State. 

HIS remarkable memory. 

Mr. Blaine's knowledge of facts, dates, events, men in our 
history, is not only remarkable but almost unprecedented.. In 
his college days, he was noted for his early love of American 
history, and for his intimate knowledge of its details. That field 
of reading has been enlarged and cultivated, in all his subseqiient 
years, until it would be difficult to find a man in the United 
States who can, on the instant, without reference to books or 



28 

note, give so many facts and statistics relating to current inter- 
ests, to our financial and revenue system, to our manufacturing 
interests of all kinds, to our river and harbor improvements, to 
our public lands, to our railway system, to our mines and min- 
erals, to our agricultural interests; in fact, to everything that 
constitutes and includes the development, enrichment and suc- 
cess of the United States. 

This has been the study of his life, and his memory is like 
an encyclopedia. He remembers because, for him, it is easier 
to remember than to forget. 

PECULIAR TRAITS. 

Mr. Blaine is a man of good temper and temperament, 
though with a certain intellectual vehemence that might some- 
times be taken for anger ; of strong physique, wonderful powers 
of endurance and of recuperation, of great activity and industry, 
kindly and frank, easily approachable, and ready to aid all good 
causes with tongue, pen and purse. 

His studies have been largely on political questions and 
political history. Everything connected with the development 
of the country interests him, and he is a dangerous antagonist 
in any matter of American history — especially of the United 
States — since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. He is 
an intense believer in the American Republic, one and indivisi- 
ble; zealous and watchful for her honor, her dignity, and her 
right of eminent domain ; ready to brave the wrath of the East 
for the welfare of the West, as in the Chinese question ; ready 
to brave the wrath of the radicals, rather than permit tlie indefi- 
nite suspension of the writ of habeas corpus ; ready to brave the 
wrath of the conservatives, for the rights of the Southern blacks, 
as in his opposition to President Hayes' Southern policy, and 
perfectly ready to give the British lion's mane a tweak when that 
fine old king of beasts crashes too clumsily anaong our fishing 
flakes. 

AS AN HISTORIAN. 

Since Mr, Blaine's withdrawal from the Cabinet, upon the 
death of President Garfield, he has devoted all of his time and 
energies to the preparation of a book of American history called 
"Twenty Years of Congress," upon which is destined to rest 
his future fame. 

The work is to be complete in two volumes, the first of which 
is already out, and the second was in process of completion 
when his labors were interrupted by the action of the Chicago 
Convention in nominating him for President. He has treated 
his theme elaborately and exhaustively. His book is in no sense 



29 

a party manifesto; it is a careful narrative; popular, but not 
undignified in style, and remarkably fair and moderate in tone. 
He has expressed a decided opinion on all the issues involved in 
the civil war ; but he is able to appreciate the arguments and 
respect the motives of those whom he holds to have been most 
widely mistaken. 

Mr. Blaine writes dispassionately, but critically reviews the 
characters of the leaders of both parties, and the men who have 
made the history of the American people during the past quarter 
of a century. His style is vigorous and clear; with keen per- 
ception he has grasped the material facts and separated them 
from unimportant events. His thoroughness for details and his 
great learning have enabled him to write a history which will 
rank the author with Bancroft and Macaulay, Mommsen and 
Guizot. 

As an illustration of the style of the book, we append a 
portion of the eighth chapter of the first volume, in which he 
speaks of John Brown at Harper's Ferry: 

The South was unnaturally and unjustifiably excited. The people of 
the Slave States could not see the situation accurately, but, like a man with 
disordered nerves, they exaggerated everything. Their sense of proportion 
seemed to be destroyed, so that they could no longer perceive tlie extrinsic 
relation which one incident had to another. In this condition of mind, when 
the most ordinary events were misapprehended and mismeasured, they were 
Startled and alarmed by an occurrence of extraordinary and exceptional char- 
acter. On the quiet morning of October, 1S59, with no warning whatever to 
the inhabitants, the United Stales arsenal, at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, was 
found to be in possession of an invading mob. The town was besieged, many 
of its citizens made prisoners, telegrapli wires cut, railway-trains stopped by a 
force which the people, as they were aroused from sleep, had no means of 
C'timating. 

A resisting body was soon organized, militia came in from the surround- 
ing country, regular troops were hurried up from Washington. By tlie opening 
of the second day, a force of fifteen hundred men surrounded the arsenal, and, 
when the insurgents surrendered, it was found that there had been but twenty- 
two in all. Four were still alive, including their leader, John Brown. 

Brown was a man of singular courage, perseverance and zeal, but was 
entirely misguided and misinformed. He had conceived the utterly impracti- 
cable scheme of liberating the slaves of the South by calling on them to rise, 
putting arms in their hands and aiding them to gain their freedom. He had 
borne a very conspicuous and courageous part in the Kansas struggles, and 
had been a terror to the slaveholders on the Missouri border. His bravery 
was of a rare type. He had no sense of fear. Governor Wise stated that 
during the fight, while Brown held the arsenal with one of his sons lying 
dead beside him, another gasping with a mortal wound, he felt the pulse of 
the dying boy, used his own musket and coolly commanded his men, all amid 
a shower of bullets from the attacking force. Wliile of sound miiul on most 
subjects. Brown had evidently lost his mental balance on the one topic of 
slavery. His sclieme miscarried the moment its execution was aUempted, as 
any one not blinded by fanaticism could have from the first foreseen. The 
matter was taken up in hot wrath by the South, with Governor Wise in the 
lead. The design was not known to or approved by any body of men in tlie 



30 

North; but an investigation was moved in the Senate, by Mr. Mason, of 
Virginia, with tlie evident view of fixing the responsibility on the Northern 
people, or at least upon the Republican party. The'^e men affected to see in 
John Brown and his handful of followers, only the advance guard of another 
irruption of Goths and Vandals from the North, bent on exciting servile 
insurrection, on plunder, pillage and devastation. Mr. Mason's committee 
found no sentiment in the North justifying Brown, but the irritating and 
offensive course of the Virginia Senator called forth a great deal of defiant 
anti-slavery expression which in his judgment was tantamount to treason. 
Brown was tried and executed. He would not permit the plea of unsound 
mind to be made on his behalf, and to the end behaved with that calm courage 
which always attracts respect and admiration. Much was made of the deliv- 
erance of the South from a great peril, and everything indicated that the 
John Brown episode was to be drawn into the political campaign as an indict 
ment against anti-slavery men. It was loudly charged by the South and by 
their partisans throughout the North that such insurrections were the legitimate 
outgrowth of Republican teaching, and that the national safety demanded the 
defeat and dissolution of the Republican party. Thus challenged, the 
Republican party did not stand on the defensive. Many of its members 
openly expressed their pity for the zealot, whose rashness had led him to 
indefensible deeds and thence to the scaffold. On the day of his execution, 
bells were tolled in many Northern towns — not in approval of what Brown 
had done, but from compassion for the fate of an old man whose mind had 
become distempered by suffering and by morbid reflection on the suffering of 
others; from a feeling that his sentence, in view of this fact, was severe, and 
lastly, and more markedly as a Northern rebuke to the attempt on the part of 
the South to make a political issue from an occurrence which was as unfore- 
seen and exceptional as it was deplorable. 

The fear and agitation in the South were not feigned, but real. Instead 
of injuring the Republican party, this very fact increased its strength in the 
North. The terror of the South at the bare prospect of a negro insurrection 
led many who had not before studied the slavery question to give serious heed 
to this phase of it. The least reflection led men to see that a domestic insti- 
tution must be very undesirable which could keep an entire community of 
brave men in dread of some indefinable tragedy. Mobs and riots of much 
greater magnitude than the John Brown uprising had frequently occurred in 
the Free States, and they were put down by the firm authority of law, without 
the dread hand of a spectre behind, which might in a moment light the 
horizon with the conflagration of homes, and subject wives and daughters to 
a fate of nameless horror. Instead, therefore, of arresting the spread of 
Republican principles, the mad scheme of Jolwi Brown tended to develop and 
strengthen them. The conviction grew rapidly that if slavery could produce 
such alarm and such demoralization in a strong State like Virginia, inhabited 
by a race of white men whose courage was never surpassed, it was not an 
institution to be encouraged, but that its growth should be prohibited in the 
new communities where its weakening and baleful influence was not yet felt. 
Sentiment of this kind could not be properly comprehended in the South. It 
was honestly misinterpreted by some, wilfully misrepresented by others. All 
construed it into a belief, on the part of a large proportion of the Northern 
people, that John Brown was entirely justifiable. His wild invasion of the 
South, they apprehended, would be repeated as opportunity offered on a 
larger scale and with more deadly purpose. This opinion was stimulated and 
developed for political ends by many whose intelligence should have led them 
to more enlightened views. False charges being constantly repeated and 
plied with incessant zeal, the most radical misconception became fixed in the 
Southern mind. It was idle for the Republican party to declare that their 
aim was only to prevent the extension of slavery to free territory, and that 



31 

they were pledged not to interfere with its existence in the States. Such dis- 
tinctions were not accepted by the Southern people. Their leaders had taught 
them that the one necessarily involved the other, and that a man who was in 
favor of the Wilmot Proviso was as bitter an enemy to the South as one'who 
incited a servile insurrection. These views were unceasingly pressed upon 
the South by the Northern Democracy, who, in their zeal to defeat the Re- 
publicans at home, did not scruple to misrepresent their aims in the most 
reckless manner. They were constantly misleading the public opinion of the 
Slave States, until at last the South recognized no difference between the 
creed of Seward and the creed of Gerrit Smith, and held Lincoln responsible 
for all the views and expressions of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell 
Phillips. The calling of a National Republican Convention was to their 
disordered imagination a threat of destruction. The success of its candidates 
would, in their view, be just cause for resistance outside the pale of the 
Constitution. 

MR. Blaine's religion. 

What the religious views of a presidential candidate may be 
is a question which, in this country, ought not to be asked. 
Nevertheless, many well-meaning people do ask it, and since the 
nomination of Mr. Blaine naany inquiries have been made as to 
his religion. 

With the complete divorce of Church and State which ob- 
tains in this country, we do not conceive that a man's private 
views of the relation of man to his Maker in any way affect his 
rapacity or fitness for high public station, or that it can be of any 
l)ublic concern whether the President of the United States, or a 
candidate for that office, belongs to a particular Church or not. 
As, however, many good people do ask this question about Mr. 
Blaine with entire good faith, we answer them as we have 
answered similar inquiries before, that Mr. Blaine and his wife 
are both members of the Congregational Church in Augusta, Me. 
On his father's side, Mr. Biaine's ancestors were always identified 
with the Presbyterian Church, and when in Washington Mr. 
Blaine and his family are attendants at a Presbyterian church. 
Mr. Blaine was educated at Washington College, Pennsylvania, 
which was then, and is now, when consolidated with Jefferson 
College, one of the staunchest of Presbyterian institutions. 

Mr. Blaine's former pastor, Dr. Ecob. in an interview pub- 
lished in the Albany Evening Jourijal, says of Mr. Blaine : 

I have been very near to Mr. Blaine, not only in the most trying political 
crises, but in the sharper trial of great grief in the household, and have never 
yet detected a false note. I would not be understood as avowing too much 
for human nature, but I mean that as I have known him he has stood loyally 
by his convictions, that his word has always had back of it a clear purpose, 
and that purpose has always been worthy of the highest manhood. 

In his house he was always the soul of geniality and good heart; there 
was always summer in that house, whatever the Maine winter might be without, 
and not only his rich neighbors and kinsmen welcomed liim home, but a long 
line of the poor hailed the return of that family as a special providence. In 
the church he is honored and beloved. The good old New England custom 



32 

of church-going with all the guests is enforced strictly in the Blaine house- 
hold. Whoever is under his roof, from the President down, is expected to 
be with the family at church. Fair weather or foul, those pews were always 
well filled. Not only his presence, but his influence, his wise counsels, and 
his purse are freely devoted to the interests of the noble old South Church of 
Augusta. 

The hold which Mr. Blaine has maintained upon the hearts of such 
great numbers of his countrymen is not sufficiently explained by brilliant 
gifts or magnetism. The secret lies in his generous, manly. Christian char- 
acter. Those who have known him best are not surprised that his friends all 
over the country have been determined that he should secure the highest 
honor within their gift. It is because they believe in him. The office has 
sought the man, the political papers to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Mr. Blaine's pastor in Augusta, when written to upon this 
subject, replied as follows : 

Augusta, Me., June i6, I884. 
Dear Sir : Your inquiry of June 13th is received. Hon. J. G. Blaine 
united with the South Congregational Church of Augusta in 1858, and has 
been from that time, and is to-day, a member in good and regular standing. 

Respectfully yours, 

A. F. SKEELE, 
Pastor South Cong. Church. 



Months before the assembling of the convention in 1884 it 
was apparent that James G. Blaine would be the popular choice, 
yet the fear existed that combinations would be formed against 
him just as had been done in 1876 and in 1880, and that the 
will of the people would again be thwarted. However, his 
popularity had increased to such an extent by the time of the 
assembling of the convention, that his nomination, in that the 
third attempt, seemed almost certain. Pennsylvania had led ofif 
months before in declaring for him. State after State followed 
her example, the press generally endorsed him, his friends of 
1876 and 1880 rallied for one final eifort, and on the sixth day 
of June he was nominated by the convention at Chicago, on the 
fourth ballot, amid the wildest enthusiasm. 



33 




THE CONVENTION HALL. 

The accompanying cut of the Chicago Exposition Building 
is taken from a recent photograph, and shows the front of the 
massive structure on Adams Street. The space allotted to spec- 
tators is not as large as that four years ago; but the National 
Committee has in this respect profited by experience. The in- 
terior of the building has been repainted, the trusses being bright 
red, and the remainder of the woodwork about the galleries blue. 
Two hugh white sounding boards at the end of the hall perfect 
its acoustic properties. The superintendent estimates that the 
floor alone will accomodate seven thousand people with seats, 
while the galleries will hold eighteen hundred more. The stage 
is in the north end of the building — reversing the plan of four 
years ago. Immediately behind and on either side of it, rising 
in amphitheatrical form, are seats for one thousand distinguished 
guests. The stage itself will accommodate the Chairman, the 
Secretaries and the National Committee — one hundred and fifty 
people at most. The middle and rear tiers of seats and the 
galleries will be for the use of the general public, to which seven 
thousand and five hundred coupon tickets have been issued. 

NOMINATING THE PRESIDENT. 



The convention was organized with ex-Senator John B. 
Henderson, of Missouri, as permanent chairman. The usual 
routine work took much time. The contesting delegations were 
admitted with satisfaction to all concerned, and the platform 
was received with enthusiasm. The report of the Connnittee 
on Rules was discussed at length. Thursday evening nomina- 



34 

tions were in order, and Judge West, of Ohio, proceeded to 
nominate Mr. Blaine, after the name of Senator Hawley, of 
Connecticut, was presented by Mr. Brandagee. 

"Maine," the chairman shouted and sank back into his 
seat, knowing full well the response that would follow. There 
was an instant, clear, loud, wild burst of applause that seemed 
to come from the throat of every man in the hall. To describe, 
in its fullness of enthusiasm, in its spontaniety of sentiment, in 
its fervor of devotion, the scene that followed — a scene such as 
was never before witnessed in a national convention — is well 
nigh impossible. 

First came the cheer rattling through the hall like a volley 
of infantry; then deepening as it grew in force, like the roar of 
cannon, and swelling as it progressed like the crash of a thunder- 
bolt across the skies. From the stage to the end of the hall, a 
distance of the eighth of a mile, the cheering, rolling in dense 
waves of sound, hoarse and shrill, sharp and clear, comming 
ling in a wild tumult of applause, which, in the minds of all 
who heard it and of those who witnessed the great scene, meant 
the nomination of James G. Blaine. 

HOW BLAINE IS IDOLIZED. 

With common impulse the audience, delegates and specta- 
tors jumped to their feet. Staid old politicians on the platform, 
venerable senators and representatives, long tried in Congress, 
new delegates, who were never before in a National Convention, 
were drawn into the whirlpool of excitement as straws are sucked 
into the eddies of the Delaware. Every delegate, save a bare 
patch here and there on the floor, where the friends of Arthur 
and of Edmunds sat, mounted his chair and took part in the de- 
monstration. 

Looking over the human sea from the stage to the balconies, 
there was a surging mob of men and women waving hats, um- 
brellas, parasols and flags. Against the dark background a 
thousand white handkerchiefs swung over the heads of the ex- 
cited audience, dotted the hall with specks of white, like the 
caps of the breakers on a stormy sea. Men put their hats on 
the tops of canes and waved them high over their heads. Women 
tore their bright fichus and laces from around their snowy necks, 
and, leaning far forward over the galleries, frantically swung 
them to and fro to give emphasis to their shrill screams of joy. 

From outside the glass windows under the dome of the hall, 
where an adventurous crowd of men and boys had gathered to 
witness the proceedings, loud cat-calls and screams were heard 
above the roar beneath. Men hung dangerously over the front 
of the galleries and waved the ends of the banners that liad been 
fastened there as decorations to the hall. 



35 

AMONG THE OPPOSITION. 

The Arthur delegates from New York and the Edmunds 
delegates, who had at first refused to leave their seats, were com- 
pelled by natural impulses and curiosity to mount their chairs, 
and soon many a well-known anti-Blaine delegate was seen wav- 
ing his hat and cheering as loudly as any supporter of the Plumed 
Knight. 

When, tired with cheering and lung-exhausted, the din 
ceased in one part of the hall, it would be taken up in another 
part, and the tumult renewed. Senator Warner Miller, usually 
impressive and never flustered, advanced from a seat in the rear 
of the chairman to the front of the stage, and, waving his arms 
wildly over his head, shouted his loudest, and then, as if realiz- 
ing the undignified character of his deportment, beckoned a 
messenger and directed him to hurry Judge West to the platform. 

Mr. Henderson vainly pounded his gavel for order. Its 
dull beats upon the hollow desk were no more audible to the 
wild crowd in the hall than were the strains of the band in the 
rear to the cheering spectators on the platform. The applause 
echoed blocks away along the streets leading to the Exposition 
Building, and the engineers of the locomotives on the Baltimore 
and Ohio Railroad, in the rear of the hall, added to the din by 
pulling loud shrieks from the whistles of their engines. At last, 
exhausted, the tumult ceased, not on the instant, but by degrees, 
fitful cheers being given long after Judge West reached the plat- 
form and was escorted to his seat. 

- The man selected to present Blaine's name to the conven- 
tion is blind. He was helped to the platform by two sturdy 
young men, who carefully guarded his progress up the steep steps 
and along the tortuous aisles to the seat provided for him on the 
left of the presiding officer's chair. 

THE ELOQUENT BLIND ORATOR. 

Judge West seems to be nearing the goal of three score and 
ten. His silver gray hair was smoothly brushed away from a 
noble forehead. Time has implanted deep wrinkles and furrows 
around the sharp features of an intelligent face. White chin 
whiskers and a white, close-cut mustache hide his mouth and 
resolute, square-cut chin. A prominent nose and bushy eye- 
brows give character if they do not add beauty to his counte- 
nance. Dressed plainly in black, wearing no ornament save a 
blue Blaine badge on the lappel of his coat and a small watch 
chain, the old man leaned back in his arm chair and faced the 
surging mot), as, though blind, he felt himself its master. 

For the last time the applause rolled through the hall and 
ended in a wild roar as the Ohio orator rose to his feet and, lift- 



36 

in^ his right hand above his head, by gesture compelled silence. 
Ten minutes of uproar and storm was followed by stillness in 
which a whisper could be heard at the first clear, distinct, sharp 
tones of the speaker rolled through the building. The clean-cut 
sentences, brilliant delivery and confident manner of the speaker 
captivated the crowd. They were in sympathy with him from 
the start, and he retained his grasp upon their feelings to the 
finish. 

As he made point after point in the opening of his speech, 
roar after roar of applause echoed through the hall. " Shall the 
Republican party triumph again?" exclaimed the orator, after 
alluding to its victories in the past. "Yes, with James G. 
Elaine" yelled one of the delegates on the front row, and the 
audience again leaped forward and gave a tremendous cheer. 

"Who shall be our candidate?" shouted Judge West as 
leaning back in the chair from which he delivered the greatest 
part of his speech, he brought a big palm leaf fan high above 
his head and seemingly awaited a reply. "Blaine!" "Blaine!" 
"Blaine!" was the stentorian reply, and another burst of applause 
put a temporary end to Judge West's speech. 

>.■ At last the supreme moment came. When Judge West for- 
mally put Blaine in nomination a scene followed of a description 
never equalled and utterly indescribable. Compared to the first 
outburst, the second ovation to Blaine was as the full burst of a 
storm after the grumblings of early thunder have passed 

The audience rose to its feet, impelled by an irresistible 
impulse to testify their admiration for the great Republican can- 
didate. Grave men acted as though mad. Newspapers were 
torn into bits, and scattered high in the air, active boys clam- 
bered along the high rafters over the hall, and, detaching the 
flags, passed them down to men in the front row of the galleries, 
who waved them frantically over the heads of those below, and 
the bands three times essayed to drown the noise by playing 
their loudest air. 

A CYCLONE OF ENTHUSIASM. 

It was futile. Men drew off their coats and shook them in 
the air. Umbrellas were hoisted and waved over the heads of 
their owners. Again handkerchiefs were brought forth and 
swung to and fro like snowflakes in a hurricane. Those too tired 
to shout gave shrill whistles, and pandemonium universal and 
all-pervading seemed to have broken forth. 

In the violent and intense excitement of the hour, men 
forgot appearances and all sense of decorum and dignity. In 
spite of the sultriness of the atmosphere and the deafening sounds 
from the bands of music, each trying to out-tire the other in 



37 

their mutual contributions to the common din, the California 
delegation, which has done some of Blaine's best work here, was 
on its feet cheering as loudly as Rocky Mountain throats could 
swell. Congressman Tom Bayne, of Pennsylvania, another of 
the Blaine managers, formed one of the loudest crowd of 
shouters. 

George William Curtis sat in his seat at the head of the 
New York delegation, blushing and paling by turns, astounded 
by the demonstration and unable to quell it. A faint smile 
overspread his genial countenance as the uproar continued, but 
it was not a smile of satisfaction. Young Roosevelt, of New 
York, and Lodge, of Massachusetts, sat in their places uneasy 
and disconsolate. Not so Senator Hoar. The excitement was 
too much for him, and he mounted his chair and looked over, 
the thousands of people who were shouting and screaming like 
madmen. The negroes from the South joined in the furor, and 
were the noisiest of the delegates. 

THE HELMET OF NAVARRE. 

When at last there seemed a prospect that the cheering 
would end, some enthusiastic friend of Blaine brought into tlic 
hall, before the Chairman's desk, a huge American flag and 
placed on the top of the staff a helmet of flowers, surmounted 
by a long white plume, the helmet of Navarre. Again did the 
audience cheer, until it seemed as though the throats of men 
would burst. The flag and helmet were raised to the stage, and 
again a deeper, longer, louder cheer arose. Ladies took flowers 
from their belts and threw them in the air. The atmosphere was 
fanned by the waving of innumerable banners. 

The decorations were stripped from the wall by the excited 
audience and shaken madly in the air. Full fifteen minutes, 
that seemed like hours, were consumed in this unprecedented 
demonstration, 

•'James G. Blaine," closed Judge West, and another great 
roar went up like the noise of many waters, sweeping in great 
waves of sound around the hall, and the crowd without, by this 
time aware of what was under way, answered in a mufiied roar, 
which echoed within. The old man ceased, with the echo of 
his eloquence still filling all the air, ten thousand people swaying 
like reeds in the wind under his voice, and feebly groped to 
leave the platform. A friend was at his side in an instant, and 
Edward McPherson laid about the old man's shoulders his long 
blue, old-fashioned cloak, and, drawing it closer to him, its folds 
falling straight, the speaker took a seat behind. By contrast 
with the wild tempest of sound just before, the rustling move- 
ment and stir and talk which fill this great house of sounds with 



88 

perpetual murmurs, seemed silence itself as Governor Davis, of 

Minnesota, a full, round man, with a bulging frock coat, strong 
face and black mustache, arose. For once, and for the first time 
in the three times in which James G. Blaine has been put before 
a national convention in nomination, the work had been well 
and skillfully planned, and performed as well. The voice of 
Governor Davis is none of the best by contrast with the resonant 
tones with which Judge West had filled the great house of sounds. 

Judge West's speech in full was as follows : 

As a delegate in the Chicago Convention in lS6o, the proudest service 
of my life was performed by voting for the nomination of that inspired 
emancipator, the 6rst Republican President of the United States. [Applause.] 
Four and twenty years of the grandest history of recorded times has distin- 
guished the ascendency of the Republican party. The skies have lowered 
and reverses threatened; but our old flag is still there, waving above the 
mansion of the presidency ; not a stain on its folds, not a cloud on its glory. 
Whether it shall maintain that grand ascendency depends upon the action of 
this great council. With bated breath a nation awaits the result. On it are 
fixed the eyes of twenty millions of Republican freemen in the North. On 
it, or to it, rather, are stretched forth the imploring hands of ten millions of 
political bondmen of the South [applause], while above, from the portals of 
light, is looking down the spirit of the immortal martyr who first bore it to 
victory, bidding to us hail and God speed ! [Applause.] 

Six times, in six campaigns, has that banner triumphed ; that symbol of 
Union, freedom, humanity and progress ; some time by that silent man of 
destiny, the Wellington of American arms [wild applause]; last by him at 
whose untimely taking off a nation swelled the funeral cries and wept above 
great Garfield's grave. [Cheers and applause.] 

• THE nation's chief. 

Shall that banner triumph again ? Commit it to the bearing of that 
chief [a voice: "James G. Blaine, of Maine." Cheers.] — commit it to the 
bearing of that chief, the inspiration of whose illustrious character and great 
rume will fire the hearts of our young men, stir the blood of our manhood, 
and redouble the fervor of the veteran, and the closing of the seventh cam- 
paign will see that holy ensign spanning the sky like a bow of promise. 
[Cheers.] Political conditions have changed since the accession of the 
Republican party to power. The mighty issues of struggling freedom and 
bleeding humanity which convulsed the continent and aroused the republie, 
rallied, united and inspired the forces of patriotism and the forces of humanity 
in one consolidated phalanx — these great issues have ceased their contentions. 
The subordinate issues resulting therefrom are settled and buried away with 
the dead issues of the past. 

The arms of the solid South are against us ; not an electoral gain can be 
expected from that section. If triumph comes, the Republican States of the 
North must furnish the conquering battalions from the farm, the anvil, the 
loom, from the mines, the workshop and the desk, from the hut of the trapper 
on the snowy Sierras, from the hut of the fisherman on the banks of the 
Hudson. The Republican States must furnish these conquering battalions of 
triumph. Come ! Does not sound political wisdom declare and demand that 
a leader shall be given to them whom our people will follow, not as conscripts 
advancing by funeral marches to certain defeat, but a grand civic hero whom 
the souls of the people desire and whom they will follow with all the enthu- 
siasm of volunteers as they sweep on and onward to certain victory. 



39 

A representati\ e of American manhood, a representative of that living 
RepuV>licanism that demands the amplest industrial protection and oppor- 
tunity whereby labor shall be enabled to earn and eat the bread of independent 
employment, relieved of mendicant competition with pauper Europe or Pagan 
China. [Loud applause.] In this contention of forces, to whose candidate 
shall be entrusted our battle flag, citizens? I am not here to do it, and may 
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do abate one tithe from the 
just fame, integrity and public honor of Chester A. Arthur, our president. 
[Applause.] I abate not one tithe from the just fame and public integrity of 
George F. Edmunds [applause], of Joseph K. Hawley [applause], of John 
Sherman [applause], of that grand old black eagle of Illinois, and I am 
proud to know that these distinguished senators whom I have named have 
borne like testimony to the public life, the public character and public integ- 
rity of him whose confirmation brought him to the highest office — second in 
dignity to the office of the President himself — the first premiership in the 
administration of James A, Garfield — a man for whom the senators and rivals 
will vote. 

SECRETARY OF STATE. 

The Secretary of State of the United States is good enough for a plain 
flesh and blood, God's people to vote for, for President. Who shall be our 
candidate? [Cries of Blaine.] Not the representative of a particular interest 
or a particular class. Send the great proclamation to the country labeled 
"the Doctors' candidate," the " Lawyers' candidate," the " Wall Street can- 
didate," and the hand of resurrection would not fathom his November grave. 
Gentlemen, he must be a representative of the Republicanism that demands 
the absolute political as well as personal emancipation and enfranchisement 
of mankind. A representative of that Republicanism which recognizes the 
stamp of American citizenship as the passport to every right, privilege and 
consideration at home or abroad, whether under the sky of Bismarck under 
the palmetto, under the pelican or the banks of the Mohawk — that Republi- 
canism that regards with dissatisfaction a despotism which, under the sic 
semper /yrannis of the old Dominion, emulates By slaughter popular majorities 
in the name of democracy and state, a Republicanism as embodied in the 
platform of principles this day adopted by your Convention. 

Gentlemen, such a representative Republican is James G. Blaine, of 
Maine. It has been averred that in makmg this nomination, every other 
consideration should merge, every other interest be sacrificed, in order and 
with a view exclusively to secure the Republican vote and carry the State of 
New York. 

A STRONG MAN WANTED. 

Gentlemen, the Republican party demands of this Convention a nominee 
whose inspiration and glorious prestige shall carry the presidency, with or 
without the State of New York; that will carry the legislatures of the several 
States and avert the sacrifice of the United States Senate ; that shall sweep 
into the tide the congressional districts to recover the House of Representa- 
tives and restore it to the Republican party. Three millions of Republicans 
believe that the man, who from the baptism of blood on the plains of Kansas 
to the fall of the immortal Garfield, in all that struggle of humanity and pro- 
gress, wherever humanity desired succor, where love for freedom called for 
protection, wherever the country called for a defender, wherever blows fell 
thickest and fastest, there, in the forefront of the battle, were seen to wave the 
white plumes of James G. Blaine, our Henry of Navarre. 

Nominate him, and the_ shouts of September victory in Maine will be 
re-echoed back by the thunders of the October victory in Ohio. Nominate 
him, and the camp fires and beacon lights will illuminate the continent from 



40 

the Golden Gate to Cleopatra's needle. Nominate him, and the millions 
who are now in waiting will rally to swell the column of victory that is 
sweeping on. 

In the name of the majority of the delegates from the Republican States 
and of our glorious constituency which must constitute this battle, 1 nominate 
James G. Blaine, of Maine. 

FEATURES OF THE SESSION. 

It did not take later than the hour of meeting for the anti- 
Blaine men to find out that the Blaine managers had not fought 
off a ballot the night before because they feared it. Another 
recess had been spent in hopeless attempts to make a winning 
combination, and morning found Arthur making no headway, 
Edmunds supported by a forlorn hope, Sherman surely shrinking, 
and nobody else within the longest range of the nominating 
lightning. The inevitable ballot was approached by the Blaine 
men hopefully and by the opposition sullenly. 

It was a surprise in that it showed Blaine to have a larger 
first ballot strength than his managers. had claimed, and Arthur 
less than anybody, even the most enthusiastic of his opponents, 
had suspected. The weakness of the Administration cause being 
thus exposed, the nomination of Blaine might have been effected 
without further delay, but the Convention resolved itself into a 
mob, and the Edmunds and Arthur people made up in noise 
what they lacked in numbers, so that it was really economic of 
time to stick to the prearranged Blaine schedule of four ballots. 

On the second and third Blaine sped along as rapidly as was 
consistent with other engagements made by the delegates, and 
when the fourth began it was understood all around that the end 
was at hand. As a matter of fact it was there. Senator Logan's 
prompt telegram, asking his friends to turn for the evident 
choice of the people, was the finishing stroke. Before this 
announcement was made it was wliispered about, and, anticipa- 
ting the slow process of a roll call, the news was flashed over the 
country that Blaine was the nominee. 

The third ballot began. The tired reading-clerk gave way 
to a fresh man. Poor Henderson, who buffeted in vain the great 
surf of Blaine applause which periodically swept the Conven- 
tion, called Governor Long to the chair, and his vigor and pow- 
erful voice showed that something might be done, even in a 
national convention, to preserve order and maintain dignity. 
The aisles were cleared, men were forced back to their seats, 
open spaces for a moment showed themselves in the rush of men 
which makes the narrow passageways like the crowded streets of 
a city. 

Everywhere the lines were drawn and tightened The man- 
aging centre of the Blaine boom gathered on the platform, and 



41 

on its very edge Elkins sat down — big-framed, bulky, thin-haired, 
of the type of full, smooth-skinned men. The luckless Arthur 
managers gathered for a last conference, and then spread out to 
see to the wavering Southern delegations, Burleigh and Butcher 
threading the seats and aisles, whispering to one colored delegate 
and another. 

Nine States pass in monotonous succession without a change. 
Such tremor as the shouts for Blaine had raised passes away. 
The Convention stills down to a comparative calm. The uproar 
has filled the air with dust, and, as it is now nearly two o'clock, 
the standing sun throws great beams across the broad hall. 
Kansas and Kentucky bring changes for Blaine, and the Conven- 
tion is astir. Four States damp the interest with the monotonous 
recurrence of earlier votes. New York adds a single tally to 
Arthur's vote, and half the delegation is on its feet with a cheer 
brought up by Arthur's Southern supporters. 

Two or three of Blaine's managers gather in the aisle for an 
instant. Butcher, with his hand to his mouth, shouts an angry 
charge of lobbying. Anson McCook rises on the instant and 
pounces on Burleigh doing rapid missionary work in the Alabama 
delegation. Burleigh retorts. Barney Biglin yells at McCook. 
The two men lean toward each other and shout in dumb show 
until some peace returns and Burleigh goes to his seat. Penn- 
sylvania is to make its change on this ballot. The alteration is 
so managed, first when Stewart, his arm extended and his dark 
face all aglow, gives the added number, and next, when a call 
of the roll raises it to a round fifty, and the Convention is again 
swept away in the rising tide. Over and over in the remaining 
States the noise of the shouting turns the Convention into a 
swaying mass of sound, until at last, a pause renewed by infinite 
pains, the ballot is announced. 

THE FINAL FIGURES. 

When the vote was officially declared the uproar was so 
great that the figures were not caught. The audience only heard 
the words "five hundred" after the name of the favorite, and 
shouted itself hoarse, as it had done half a dozen times before, 
the band meanwhile playing and artillery on the lake shore firing 

The figures were: Blaine, 541; Arthur, 207; Edmunds, 
41; Logan, 7; Hawley, 15; Lincoln, 2. 

THE SECOND PLACE. 

It was thought best not to be in a hurry about the nomina- 
tion for Vice-President. Mistakes have been made in that way. 



42 

and conventions have at last learned that the tail of the ticket 
deserves some attention. A recess was taken until eight o'clock 
in the evening. Meanwhile there was an active and considerate 
canvass of names. Logan, Lincoln, Foraker and Gresham were 
most talked about, but the drift all the while was toward Logan, 
the only question being whether the black eagle of Illinois, as 
he was called by his nominator last night, would consent to the 
use of his name for the second place on the ticket. 

He was plied with importuning telegrams, and at last it was 
posted on the bulletins at the hotels, where the delegates most 
congregate, that he placed himself in the hands of his friends. 
That settled it. The Convention was an army of his friends, 
largely under the leadership of men who had served with him in 
the late war. Those who were not already convinced of the 
propriety of the nomination had been brought to it by the argu- 
ment that, for the first time since the war, a civilian had been 
nominated for President, and that the soldier element must have 
a place on the ticket. The other candidates disappeared from 
the field as if by magic, and when the Convention assembled 
again the name of John A. Logan was the only one presented. 

It was seconded by men from every section of the country, 
the only trouble being to put an end to the speech-making. But 
the really notable speech was that of General Robinson, of Ohio, 
who is the head of the Rej)ublican ticket to be voted for in that 
State in October. With Blaine and Logan, he said that State 
was secure. 

It was moved that the nomination be made by acclamation, 
but, on the appeal of the Illinois delegation, there was a call of 
the roll, and, except a few dissenters in New York and Massa- 
chusetts, the whole Convention voted for Logan. 

SCENES IN THE CONVENTION. 

In utter weariness the convention separated at 2 o'clock on 
the morning of the 6th. Eight hours later the great hall was 
crowded, and by 11 o'clock the convention was in its place. 
The air was full of the sense of rapid work and swift action. 
The audience sat, rank on rank, in the stir and confusion of 
this tremendous claque, which leaves so little of the stage to 
piece or players. 

The groups upon whom the work pivots hurried to their 
places. George William Curtis came in with Carl Shurz, and 
the sinister German and benignant American separated, one to 
watch defeat from the stage, and the other to endure it on the 
floor. Roosevelt, Curtis and Lodge stood together for a moment 
to talk over the last failure at combination. Burleigh and 
Dutcher, Arthur's delegate hunters, one thin and nervous and 



43 

the other full and phlegmatic, passed from point to point among 
the dark cloud of Southern delegates which ran from Alabama 
to Louisiana on the left of the convention. 

In this frame and setting of constant, assiduous conference, 
the work went on for awhile. Debate, there is none in these 
convulsive political tempests. The convention is in stir and 
motion each moment, with men conferring by groups and passing 
from point to point in this swaying line of battle, this mad 
wrestle between opposing parties, in whom applause and yell and 
shout has set every nerve tingling, and left no drop of blood at 
rest. 

Through the long hours in which the tall reading^lerk stood, 
the tally sheet in his hand, and shouted over the roll of States, to 
one sitting just at the front of the convention, facing its long 
ranks, there was perpetual sight of the swift work by which these 
battles are decided. 

Now it was John Stewart and McKinley who stood, their 
arms locked about each other, as they whispered; now sturdy, 
wholesome-faced John Long, of Massachusetts, was closeted, in 
the silence which this tempest of sound gives men who talk side 
by side within its tumult, with Roosevelt, Curtis and Lodge. 
And now the group of New Yorkers who stand for Arthur 
gathered, and again the two men on whose shoulders this great 
work has chiefly rested, Stephen B. Elkins and Thomas Donald- 
son, stood together and watched the storm shape to the harvest 
the fruit for which they had planned and labored. 

The scene was not then merely rows upon rows of seated 
delegates, shouting their votes in the din of the galleries. The 
real picture is such a ranked concourse of circling, seated thou- 
sands as only one imperial republic has ever gathered, and as 
our Republican party only now gathers. Sitting about the narrow 
arena, half the size of a small church, in which eight hundred 
men are seething and surging with excitement, rushing here and 
there, knotting in groups and tangling in long lines, shouting 
message and warning and advice as men shout upon a ship's 
deck when a gale is at its height, and the uttered voice is blown 
away from the very lips — through all this, to save it from the 
mere madness of a mob, there is sense and presence of the arch- 
ing fact that history is making here, and the world's greatest 
civic prize is set in the list. 

Across the rustle the band played "Dixie," and the first 
shrill shout of the day came at its note, but the audience, back 
at its work with the short gap of a few hours, was utterly weary, 
and the contest this year has brought none of the tension which 
calls out applause at the appearance of a familiar face. Tally 
sheets were in every hand, and the strained, expectant watchful- 
ness for every vote laid silence on the listening thousands. 



44 

The figures have been known for moments. There has been 
active rushing to and fro. Men have been passing between New 
York, Ohio and Massachusetts. Barely forty votes separate 
Blaine from victory. Whatever is done needs instant action. 
The gavel gains a quiet moment at last and the vote, climbing 
from the lesser numbers, and passing through Logan's fifty-three, 
Edmunds' sixty-nine and Arthur's two hundred and seventy-four, 
reaches Blaine's three hundred and seventy-five. 

Then comes a crash that ends all comparison with what has 
gone before. Seats empty, aisles fill, the air is one shaking mass 
of handkerchiefs, canes and umbrellas. The entire Blaine vote 
is on its feet shouting, cheering, yelling in all forms and shapes 
— whistles, cat-calls and hurrahs. By word and inarticulate yell, 
the human voice of ten thousand people empties itself into the 
air. 

The moustached reading clerk stepped to the edge of the 
platform and, stiffening his broad tally sheet, shouted in a long 
cadence Ala-a-bam-ma. The tap of Henderson's gavel, the sh! 
sh! of the whole audience, stilled the morning air, yet free from 
dust, as a dark man with graying, reddish beard, sliouted, 
syllable by syllable : "Alabama casts seventeen votes for Chester 
A. Arthur, one vote for James G. Blaine and one vote for John 
A. Logan." A New York " Hi ! hi ! hi ! " sprang in among the 
boys, and was straightway strangled in hisses. The vote went 
on, State by State. 

The first Blaine storm of the day breaks when Maine is 
called, and then seated thousands spring to their feet and the 
hall blossoms white with waving handkerchiefs and fills with 
shouting. 

The roll is over at last. The clerks bend over the tally 
sheets, innumerable pencils pass up and down the thousands of 
tally sheets, which carry through the convention the advertisement 
of a Philadelphia paper, and then, as Henderson rises to give 
the result, there is a wild sway and raid of telegraph boys about 
the correspondents' desk. All over the land men are putting up 
before listening thousands the tally: Blaine, 334^^; Arthur, 278; 
Edmunds, 93; Logan, 63^ ; John Sherman, 30; Hawley, 13; 
Lincoln, 3 ; General Sherman, 2, The first ballot ends in an- 
other Blaine storm, checked as the second ballot opens. 

THE SECOND BALLOT. 

Changes begin. Arkansas adds three votes to Blaine. A 
dozen states pass, and the vote stands unchanged. The second 
ballot goes on and Blaine is gaining. Every vote is watched 
with breathless interest followed by tumults of applause. The 
Blaine men feel that they are gaining ground. The Arthur men 



45 

know that they are losing. The Edmunds men are disconsolate. 
The ballot ends, and Blaine is further to the front. 

Votes must nominate. Enthusiasm, yell and cry will not. 
Again and again the votes of states for Blaine unlooije the up- 
roar, and again and again it dies av/ay to leave the result to go 
on in its steady, unchanging fashion. The air is tremulous with 
excitement. There is abroad the shadow of sudden changes, 
the certainty that the steadily growing pressure must end in some 
outburst of utter disorder, but when the scenes of last night are 
repeated, when the whole place goes wild in delirious cries of 
Blaine, and hats dot the air and shaking handkerchiefs fill it, 
the convention gets to its feet and looks on, like one too often 
under fire to take more than the interest of spectators in the 
firing. 

With Blaine at 349 and Arthur at 276, however, the gap was 
widened past repair between the candidates, and it was plain 
when order came again, such order as this restless mob gives, 
that the next ballot must make or mar all the plans of the past 
or assure all the hopes of the future. 

A FRUITLESS RECESS EFFORT. 

In the midst of it, his lips vainly forming sentence after 
sentence, stands Foraker, slender, well-built, his face shining 
with the effort, and his voice carried away by the Blaine gale. 
Minute by minute passes before a lull comes, and then it becomes 
known, rather by men passing the word along than by any hear- 
ing of his words, that he moves a recess until 7.30 o'clock. 

It was the last uncertain chance to defeat Blaine, the bare 
possibility that five hours of cabal might bring the candidate, in 
place of Blaine, whom five months of popular agitation and dis- 
cussion had not evolved. 

Straightway Stewart, steadying himself, shouts in the storm 
that breaks on Foraker' s motion that the opposing forces have 
passed the skirmish line and the battle must join. For the first 
time in the frequent popular calls for Blaine his cause has had 
good management before the convention. For the first time it 
had now a leader in the convention. There is in the stress and 
storm of these conflicts the shock, if not the danger, of battle, 
and Stewart, by voice and manner, by look and gesture, stand- 
ing erect, his face aflame and his arm extended, threw into his 
manner all that a leader in the forefront needed. This may not 
be the best way to decide momentous issues; but, given these 
conditions, by such leadership is victory won, and won it was. 

For twenty long, shouting, swaying, struggling minutes 
these words of Stewart, this call to battle were the last articulate 
sounds men heard. The deliberative body, in the heat of its 



46 

excitement, dissolved into an utter mob. Within twenty square 
feet stood the dozen men at work trying to carry to some issue 
the work before them, and about were ten thousand howling 
human beings. The unfortunate chairman, with a brain bigger 
at the top than the base, utterly unfitted by experience for the 
stormy work, passed utterly out of all influence, and nervously 
handled his gavel, while the Sergeant-at-Arms feebly waved a 
gilt baton at the surging crowd. He had begun, McPherson at 
his shoulder, by putting the motion to take a recess. The mo- 
tion of his lips and the turns of his hands had given a hint of 
his act, and the thousands before him bellowed together a long 
"No," in whose echoing thunders Dutcher, of New York, was 
vainly endeavoring to secure a roll-call by states — breathing time 
for the broken anti-Blaine line to form. 

Foraker, at every pause in the storm, which rose and fell as 
tempests will, was shouting the same demand. Meanwhile the 
chairman, shut off from these men by the great wall of sound 
raised by the Blaine cheers, declared the question lost, and di- 
rected the roll-call to begin on the next ballot. In any case, it 
proved that this meant Blaine's nomination, with no chance for 
the opposition to act together. It could mean nothing else. 
Foraker, Dutcher, Roosevelt, a distant man in North Carolina 
and a score more stood shouting. By their sides were Stewart, 
Phelps, of New Jersey; Burrows, Bayne, Sheard and Husted, of 
New York, calling for the exact right Henderson's weak act gave 
them. Of the technical accuracy of their position no possible 
doubt could exist. Parliamentary right was all on their side. 

One of those dangerous crises had come on which turn the 
fortunes of great events. It would have been easy (for this tur- 
moil began in nothing and continued in the inefficiency of the 
presiding officer) to soil the fairness of Blaine's nomination. 
William McKinley, of Ohio, had been known as the Blaine 
leader in Ohio, and when he mounted his chair there was pause 
on both sides. The issue which had worked to the surface through 
twenty yeasting moments was whether the demand for a roll call 
had been made in technical season before the chairman announced 
the result on the motion to adjourn. "Let us raise no technical 
objections," said McKinley. "As a friend of Mr. Blaine, I in- 
sist on having the roll-call and then vote the motion down." 
Air and manner, voice and attitude in the strong-featured, dark- 
faced, full-voiced man whosppke for fair play and justice carried 
both parties with him. 

THE TEST VOTE OF THE DAY. 

The first pause came over Illinois. There was an instant's 
question, and then Logan remained in the fi^ld. The state 
voted for the recess. The last great shout of the opposition went 



47 

up over the result. On down through New York and Ohio the 
roll passed with minor changes, both states holding their old 
vote. The Pennsylvanians added two more to the Blaine column. 
Virginia brought in a handful, and long before the territories 
were reached the motion was lost by almost loo majority — 364 
yeas to 450 nays. The vote nominated Blaine. 

The rest was mere surplusage of cheer and shout. The 
fourth ballot gave him all but a third of the votes cast, placing 
his total on the deciding ballot at 554 to 207 for Arthur, whose 
champion, Burleigh, took the stage and pledged New York to 
the candidate, while the convention rocked with the last great 
cheer of the day. 

For ten minutes together one long, continuous shout filled 
the air, and shut in each man to silence as far as his own voice 
was concerned. 

A FOREGONE CONCLUSION. 

The result was now so far a foregone conclusion that Fora- 
ker moved to make it unanimous, but the New York Indepen- 
dents, led by Roosevelt, the Arthur men led by Butcher, and 
Massachusetts, led by Long, objected. Dutcher could do no 
less. Not half an hour before he had been passing about badges 
marked "Arthur, if it takes all Summer," and they were already 
hanging limp and chilly on every New York Arthur man. 

So the vote started, Edward McPherson, who began eight 
years ago in the struggle which ended to-day, standing on the 
front of the platform and calling the roll. Behind him was 
Warner Miller, of New York, aglow with satisfaction, and the 
little circle which three weeks ago organized in Washington to 
do the work here. Now, the greatest of these in all his beam- 
ing presence, was Tom Donaldson. 

WITHDRAWING LOGAN. 

The roll-call was a long, triumphal progress for Blaine, of 
Maine. When Shelby M. Collum mounted his chair and with a 
slip of paper in his hand, withdrew Logan, the result was certain, 
and the great total of votes ended in another dissolution of all 
order. Kansas came down the aisle with a great banner spread 
with corn and grain and decked with Blaine's picture. Colorado's 
eagle was carried up and down the aisle, and the banner which 
has accompanied the California delegation in its trip from Cal- 
ifornia to Maine, "Through Iowa All for Blaine," triumphantly 
paraded the convention. 

The remnants of the Arthur support clung to their sinking 
ship, and men have rarely put more of heroism into their parting 
words than did the Edmunds men in their last vote. It was 
over at last. The gavel rose, and when it fell James G. Blaine 
had been declared the candidate of the party to which he has 
given the labors of a lifetime. 



48] 



THE BALLOTS IN FULL. 
FIRST BALLOT. SECOND BALLOT 



States. 



Alabama 

Arkansas 

California , 

Colorado 

Connecticut*... 

Delaware 

Florida 

Georgia 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas* 

Kentucky! 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts. 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire.. 
New Jerseyf J.. 

New Yorkf 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania... 
Rhode Island.. 
South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Vermont 

Virginia 

West Virginia.. 

Wisconsin 

Arizona 

Dakota 

Idaho 

Montana 

New Mexico... 

Utah ! 

Washington j 

Wyoming 

Dist. of Columbia' 



°.o 



lO 

7 
8 

3 
6 

3 
4 

12 
22 
15 
13 

9 

13 
8 
6 
8 

14 

13 
7 
9 

i6 

5 
3 
4 
9 
36 
II 

23 
3 

30 
4 
9 

12 

13 
4 

12 
6 

II 



24 

44 

30 

26 

I 

26 

16 

12 

16 

28 

26 

14 
18 

32 

10 

6 

8 

18 

72 
22 
46 

6 
60 

8 
18 

24 

26 

8 

24 

12 

22 

2 

2 



3 

18 
26 
12 

5^ 

2 

12 
10 

I 
15 

7 

I 

5 
8 
6 



p4 


Q 


S 


Z 


X 


U) 


H 


S 


OS 





<i 


w 



Totals 401, 820334^ 278 



40 



25- 



93 



63* 



25 



30 



*Hawley, 12 and i. fLincoln, i and 2. JW. T 
Sherman, 2. 



40 



24. 

5' 
6 



3' 
6, 

12', 



23 



349 276 85 61 28 



Hawley, 13. Lincoln, 4. 
W. T. Sherman, 2. 



THE BALLOTS IN FULL. [49 

FOURTH BALLOT 



THIRD BALLOT. 



States. 



Alabama 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

Connecticut* 

Delaware 

Florida 

Georgia 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas- 

Kentucky! 

Louisiana | 4 

jNIaine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts 

Michigan! 

Minnesota 

Mississippi! 

Missouri 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 

New Jersey f 

New York 

North Carolina 

Ohio 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania 

Rhode Island 

South Carolina 

Tennessee 

Texas 

Vermont 

Virginia 

West Virginia 

Wisconsin j 

Arizona 

Dakota 

Idaho 

Montana 

New Mexico 

Utah 

Washington 2 

Wyoming | 

District of Columbia i 



Totals 375 274 69 53 25 



40. 



*Havvley, 12, I. f Lincoln, I, i, 6. JW. T. 
Sherman, 1,1. 



12 , 

3 



34 

30 

24 2 

^8, 

9| 15 

91 7 

I2| 

3| 7 
26 

14 

2\ 16 

•32 ' 

10 ' 

6 



17 j 

29i 301 

8| 12'. 

46! 

6 

51' 

7 

2 
II 
15 



ij 
15 



541 207 41 



18:, 



Hawley, 15. Lincoln, 2 



50 



NOTIFICATION BY CHAIRMAN HENDERSON. 

The committee appointed by the National Convention to 
notify Mr. Blaine of his nomination, arrived at the residence of 
the candidate on the twenty-first day of June, and upon the lawn 
surrounding his house, the committee, through their chairman, 
Mr. Henderson, delivered its message in the following address: 

Mr. Blaine: — Your nomination for the office of the President of the 
United States, by the National Republican Convention recently assembled at 
Chicago, is already known to you. The gentlemen before you, constituting 
the committee, composed of one member from each State and Territory of 
the country, and one from the District of Columbia, now come as the accred- 
ited organ of that Convention to give you formal notice of your nomination 
and to request your acceptance thereof. 

It is, of course, known to you that, beside your own, several other names 
among the most honored in the councils of the Republican party were pre- 
sented by their friends as candidates for this nomination. Between your 
friends and friends of gentlemen so justly entitled to the respect and confi- 
dence of their political associates the contest was one of generous rivalry, 
free from any taint of bitterness, and equally free from the reproach of 
injustice. At an early stage of the proceedings of the Convention it became 
manifest that the Republican States whose aid must be invoked at last to 
insure success to the ticket earnestly desired your nomination. It was equally 
manifest that the desire so earnestly expressed by delegates from those States 
was but a truthful reflection of an irresistible popular demand. It was not 
thought nor pretended that the demand had origin in any ambitious desires of 
your own, or any organized work of your friends, but it was recognized to be, 
what it truthfully is, a spontaneous expression by free people of love and 
admiration of a chosen leader. 

No nomination would have given satisfaction to every member cf the 
party. This is not to be expected in a country so extended in area and so 
varied in interests. The nomination of Mr. Lincoln, in i860, disappointed so 
many hopes and overthrew so many cherished ambitions that for a short time 
disaffection threatened to ripen in open revolt. In 1872 the discontent was 
so pronounced as to impel large masses of the party to organized opposition 
to its nominees. For many weeks after the nomination of General Garfield, 
in 1880, defeat seemed almost inevitable. In each case the shock of disap- 
pointment was followed by the sober second thought; individual j^references 
gradually yielded to convictions of public duty; the promptings of patriotism 
finally arose superior to the irritations and animosities of the hour. The 
party in every trial has grown stronger in the face of threatened danger. 

In tendering you the nomination, it gives us pleasure to remember that 
those great measures which furnished causes for party congratulations by the 
late convention at Chicago, and which are now crystalized into the legislation 
of the country — measures which have strengthened and dignified the nation, 
while they have elevated and advanced the people — at all times and on all 
proper occasions received your earnest and valuable support. It was your 
good fortune to aid in protecting the nation against the assaults of armed 
treasons. You were present and helped to unloose the shackles of the slave, 
you assisted in placing new guarantees of freedom in the Federal Constitution, 
your voice was potent in preserving national faith when false theories of 
finance would have blasted national and individual prosperity. We kindly 
remember you as the fast friend of honest money and commercial integrity. 



51 

In all that pertains to security and repose of capital, dignity of labor, 
manhood, elevation and freedom of the people, the right of the oppressed to 
demand, and the duty of the Government to afford protection, your j.uhlic 
acts have received the unqualified endorsement of popular approval. But we 
are not unmindful of the fact that parties, like individuals, cannot live entirely 
on the past, however splendid the record. The present is ever charged with 
its immediate cares, and the future presses on with its new duties, its per- 
plexing responsibilities. Parties, like individuals, however, that are free from 
stain of violated faith in the past, are fairly entitled to the presumption of 
sincerity in their promises for the future. 

Among the promises made by the party in its late Convention at Chicago, 
are economy and purity of administration; protection of the citizen, native 
and naturalized, at home and abroad; prompt restoration of the navy; wise 
reduction of the surplus revenue; the relieving of the taxpayers without 
injuring the laborer; the preservation of the public lands for actual settlers; 
that all import duties, when necessary at all, be levied not for revenue only, 
but for the double purpose of revenue and protection ; the regulation of 
international commerce, the settlement of international differences by peaceful 
arbitration, but coupled with the reassertion and maintenance of the Monroe 
doctrine as interpreted by the fathers of the Republic ; perseverance in the 
good work of civil service reform to the end that the dangers to free institu- 
tions which lurk in the power of official patronage may be wisely and effect- 
ually avoided; an honest currency, based on coin of intrinsic value, adding 
strength to the public credit and giving renewed vitality to every branch of 
American industry. 

Mr. Blaine, during the last twenty-three years the Republican party has 
builded a new republic, a republic far more splendid than that originally 
designed by our fathers. Its proportions, already grand, may yet be enlarged, 
its foundations may yet be strengthened, and its columns be adorned with 
beauty more resplendent still. To you, as its architect in chief, will soon be 
assigned this grateful work. 

MR. BLAINE's reply. 

Mr. Blaine never looked better than when listening to these 
remarks, except when he replied to them. During the delivery- 
he stood erect, with his arms folded. His countenance was 
clear, his eye bright, his posture superb, and he seemed the 
picture of health. Now and then he would throw a glance over 
the committee in front of him, as if searching for a familiar face, 
but this seemed to be done to rest the eye from looking con- 
stantly at one object, for there was no sign of recognition upon 
his strongly-marked features. He was in striking contrast to the 
man who was delivering to him the commission of party leader 
voted by the Convention. 

]\Ir. Henderson looked thinner and taller than ever by the 
side of the perfect figure of the man who waited upon his words. 
He seemed to grow as he read. When he had finished, Mr. 
Blaine turned about and took from his son's hand the roll of 
paper upon which was written his reply, and said : 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the National Committee: — 
I receive, not without deep sensibility, your official notice of the action of the 
National Convention already brought to my knowledge through the public 



52 

press. I appreciate more profoundly than I can express the honor which is 
implied in the nomination for the presidency by the Republican party of the 
nation, speaking through the authoritative voice of duly accredited delegates. 
To be selected as a candidate by such an assemblage, from a list of eminent 
statesmen whose names were presented, fills me with embarrassment. I can 
only express my gratitude for so signal an honor and ray desir^ to prove 
worthy of the great trust reposed in me. 

In accepting the nomination, as I now do, I am impressed — I am also 
oppressed— with a sense of the labor and responsibility which attach to my 
position. The burden is lightened, however, by the host of earnest men who 
support my candidacy, many of whom add, as does your honorable committee, 
cheer of personal friendship to pledge of political fealty. A more formal 
acceptance will naturally be expected, and will, in due season, be communi- 
cated. It may, however, not be inappropriate at this time to say I have 
already made a careful study of the principles announced by the National 
Convention, and that, in whole and in detail, they have my heartiest sympathy 
and meet my unqualified approval. 

Apart from your official errand, gentlemen, I am extremely happy to 
welcome you all to my house. With many of you I have already shared 
duties of public service and enjoyed most cordial friendship. I trust your 
journey from all parts of the great republic has been agreeable, and that 
during your stay in Maine you will feel you are not among strangers, but with 
friends. Invoking blessings of God upon the great cause which we jointly 
represent, let us turn to the future without fear and with manly hearts. 



"THE WOODS ARE FULL OF THEM!" 

Many campaigns in the past have had popular symbols or 
watchwords with which to decorate the banners, transparencies 
and other paraphernalia used in parades. The log cabin was the 
symbol in an early campaign; in iS6o the candidate figured as 
the rail splitter from Illinois ; a saying of the famous soldier 
candidate, "We'll fight it out on this line, if it takes all sum- 
mer," became the watchword of a later campaign; in iSSo it 
was the canal boat and the boy from the towpath. The local 
committee from Augusta, Me., taking the hint from the name of 
their State, the Pine Tree State, have adopted as the symbol of 
this campaign a pine cone, and the legend ''The woods are full 
of them" ; and before the November election we predict that 
thousands of banners will bristle with pine cones, and the legend 
will be fanoiliar household words. 



JOHN ALEXANDER LOGAN. 



GENERAL JOHN ALEXANDER LOGAN is equally dis- 
tinguished as soldier and statesman. His father, Dr. John 
Logan, emigrated from Ireland in 1822, and settled as a 
country practitioner near Murphysboro, III. He prospered in 
what was then a wild country, and in 1824 married Elizabeth 
Jenkins, a native of Tennessee, who, two years later, on the 
night of February 9, 1826, became the mother of the present 
Republican candidate for Vice-President. 

The child was taught to read and write by his father and 
mother. There were no schools in those days. At nineteen he 
enlisted as a private in the Mexican war, and he was chosen 
Lieutenant in the First Illinois Regiment. He served with dis- 
tinction throughout the war, and at its close, in the Fall of 1S48, 
he returned to his home to begin the study of the law under the 
guidance of his uncle, Alexander M. Jenkins, formerly Lieuten- 
ant Governor of the state. After serving as clerk of the county 
court, he received h's diploma and took up his position at the 
bar in 185 1. He also immediately entered into politics, and 
the same Fall was nominated and elected to the State Legisla- 
ture. From that time until the outbreak of the war, he figured 
prominently, not only in the State but also in the National Coun- 
cils of the Democratic party, and served two terms in Congress 
as its representative. Immediately on the outbreak of the war, 
however, he was among the first to enlist in the defense of the 
Union. He was in the first battle of Bull Run, and among the 
last to leave the field. Returning to his home September i, he 
assisted in raising troops, and September 13, the Thirty-first 
Regiment of Illinois Infantry was organized with Logan com- 
missioned as colonel. The first engagement in which he and 
his command participated was the battle of Belmont, in Novem- 
ber of the same year, when his ability as a commander, and his 
dash and intrepidity, foreshadowed the fact that he was to play 
a conspicuous part in the operations of the army. He partici- 
pated in the movements at Fort Henry, and was present at the 
battle of Fort Donelson, where he received a severe wound, and 
did not rejoin his command until some weeks afterward, on the 
evening of the last day of the battle of Shiloh. On March 3, 



54 

1 862, he was made Brigadier General and participated in the 
sies^e of Corinth as commander of the First Brigade in General 
Judah's division of the right wing of the army, and for his val- 
iant services was publicly thanked by General Sherman in his 
official report. 

In the movements about Vicksburg from February, 1863, 
until July 4, when General Pemberton surrendered, General 
Logan, with .his command, was actively engaged, and he was 
ord^ered to take the lead in the march into Vicksburg, July 4, 
after which he was given the command of that post, which he 
retained until placed in command of the Fifteenth Corps, 
November 14, 1863. 

On July 22, 1864, Logan, as commander of the Fifteenth 
Army Corps, was ordered in pursuit of the enemy soutli of 
Atlanta. In the hard-fought battle that followed. General 
McPherson was killed, and General Logan succeeded him in 
command of the Army of the Tennessee. The success of the 
battle was accorded to Logan by General Sherman's official re- 
port. The battle of July 28, which followed, was another hotly 
contested fight, in which Logan's command was equally as con- 
spicuous and successful. 

During the war Gen. Logan was ordered to Nashville to super- 
sede Gen. G. H. Thomas, of whose slowness the War Department 
was weary. On reaching there, and going about with his prede- 
cessor, he found that his delay had been the result of admirable 
planning and complete preparation for a victory. General 
Logan might easily have stepped in and reaped the fruit of that 
wise provision, winning laurels for himself at the expense of his 
displaced and chagrined brother in arms. This he could not 
and would not do, and he withheld the military order which 
would have justified him in so doing ; and General Thomas was 
permitted to win and enjoy his well-earned fame._ When Gen. 
Logan was thanked for that chivalrous act, he said briefly that 
no man of honor could have done otherwise ; but this standard 
of honor did not always prevail among our Eastern generals. 

After the close of the war General L-'gan was offered 
the position of Minister to Mexico, but declined. In 1866 he 
was elected to Congress from the state at large in Illinois by 
a majority of 55,987. In the next, the Forty-first Congress, Logan 
began to make his mark, and in 1870 was elected by the Illinois 
Legislature to the United States Senate. After serving his term 
he'\vas defeated by the Independents, who united upon the Hon. 
David Davis as his successor ; but he was again elected to suc- 
ceed Oglesby in 1876. He has always taken an active part in the 
legislation of the Senate, and has introduced many useful bills. 



55 

GENERAL GRANT's OPINION OF LOGAN. 

Harper's Weekly in June, 1S72, published the following: 
"When some one said to President Grant that Senator Logan 
seemed rather inclined to complain of the administration, the 
President smiled, and answered that he knew Logan well. ' He 
is critical by nature,' he said, 'and always speaks his opinion.' 
'During the war,' said General Grant, 'while we lay in camp, 
nobody commented more sharply upon the little slips and blun- 
ders than John Logan; but when the order came to march, no 
corps was in more perfect order, none moved more promptly, 
and none was more bravely led than John Logan's. He will 
criticise the administration just as often and as sharply as he 
chooses; but he will give no aid or comfort to the enemy.' " 

THE WIFE OF GENERAL LOGAN. 

This simple narrative presents many lessons which the 
younger generations of American women might apply with profit 
to themselves and the happiness of the world at large. We do 
not think it a violation of the confidences of a private conversa- 
tion to give them the benefit of the example of this true type of 
American womanhood. The American ancestry of Mrs. Logan 
goes back to a sturdy Irish settler of Virginia and a French 
pioneer of Louisiana. Her great-grandfather, Robert Cunning- 
ham, of Virginia, was a soldier of the. war for Independence, 
after which he removed to Tennessee, thence to Alabama and 
thence to Illinois, when still a Territory, and there manumitted 
his slaves. Her father, Captain John M. Cunningham, served 
in the fierce Black Hawk war. He was a member of the Legis- 
lature of Illinois in 1845 ^'^^ '4^ ^^^ served in the Mexican 
war. Her mother was Miss Elizabeth Fontaine, of a dis- 
tinguished family of that name which had arrived in Louisiana 
during the French occupancy of that country, and had thence 
journeyed up the Mississippi River and settled in Missouri. It 
was here that John Cunningham met his bride and it was near 
the present village of Sturgeon, then known as Petersburg, in 
Boone county, Mo., that Mary Simmerson Logan was born, on 
August 15, 1S38. When she was one year old her parents re- 
moved to Illinois, and settled at Marion, in Williamson county. 
It was here that the mother and her oldest daughter, then but 
nine years old, shared the dangers of a frontier home and the 
cares and solicitude of a growing family, when the husband and 
father went forth to fight the battles of his country upon the 
parched plains of Mexico, and braved the trials and privations 
of a miner's life in the Sierras of California. 

This courageous and dutiful little girl relieved her mother, 
who was not strong, of most of the household work, iA\^ still 



found time to attend the primitive school of the neighborhood 
and train herself in useful needle work. 

HER CHILDHOOD. 

The father felt a just pride in his eldest daughter. The 
assistance which she had rendered her mother during his long 
absence in Mexico and California had even more closely endeared 
her to his heart, and her love of study had prompted him to 
give part of. his income to her proper education. Accordingly, 
in 1853, the daughter was sent to the Convent St. Vincent, near 
Morganfield, Ky., a branch of the Nazareth Institute, the oldest 
institution of the kind in the country. This was the nearest 
educational establishment of sufficient advancement in the higher 
branches of knowledge. The young lady was reared a Baptist ; 
after her marriage she joined the Methodist Church, the Church 
of the Logan family. 

Having- graduated in 1855, Miss Cunningham returned to 
her father's home at Shawneetown. In her younger days, when 
a mere child, she had aided her father as Sheriff of the county, 
Clerk of the Court and Register of the Land Office in preparing 
his papers. Those were not the days of blank forms for legal 
documents. Accordingly the father depended upon the daugh- 
ter to make copies for him. While Mary Cunningham was thus 
aiding her father in his official duties, John Logan was Prosecu- 
ing Attorney of the district. He had known father Cunningham 
and was his warm friend. He had known the daughter as a little 
girl. In 1855 they were married, and at once went to the young 
attorney's home at Benton, Franklin county. The bride was 
sixteen years of age, but her young life had already been one of 
usefulness to her mother and of great service to her father. 

THE MARRIAGE. 

The young wife immediately installed herself in the place 
of companion and helpmate to her husband. She accompanied 
him on all his professional journeys, an undertaking in those 
days of wilderness and no roads often requiring great endurance 
and privation. In 1856 the devoted wife saw her husband tri- 
umphantly elected a member of the Legislature, and in the 
famous Douglas and Lincoln Senatorial contest he was elected 
as a Douglas Democrat to Congress. In all these hard-fought 
political campaigns the noble wife went with her husband, as- 
sisting in much of his work of correspondence and copying, and 
frequently receiving his friends and conferring with them on the 
details of the campaign. When Mr. Logan came to Congress 
as a Representative Mrs. Logan came with him. She remained 
with him in Washington until the outbreak of the Rebellion, 



57 

when he resigned his seat in Congress to return to Illinois to go 
into the service of his country. 

The war having commenced, and Mr. Logan having raised 
and been assigned to the command of the Thirty-first Illinois 
Volunteers, Mrs. Logan, with her only living child, then three 
years old (now Mrs. Tucker), returned to her father's home at 
Marion. The Illinois troops having been ordered into camp at 
Cairo, Mrs. Logan joined her husband there. During the fierce 
battle of Belmont, Mrs. Logan heard the booming of the guns 
across the turgid flood of the Mississippi. In the midst of pain- 
ful and anxious suspense for the safety of her own, of whom she 
felt that he was in the thickest of the conflict, she gave a helping 
hand to the care of the wounded and suffering soldiers as they 
were brought back from that bloody field. 

DURING THE WAR. 

When the army entered upon the Tennessee River cam- 
paign, Mrs. Logan again returned to her home, but was soon 
shocked by the news from Donelson that her husband had fallen 
at the head of his charging columns dangerously wounded. 
She hastened to the scene to care for her husband. For days it 
was a struggle between life and death. 

At Memphis, in the Winter of 1862-3, Mrs. Logan again 
joined her husband, now a general, and remained there until he 
led his troops in the campaign which ended the surrender of 
Vicksburg. 

During this time, and to the end of the war, Mrs. Logan 
remained at Carbondale, where, out of the General's salary, 
they had bought an unpretentious home. Upon his return from 
the war General Logan was nominated by acclamation for Con- 
gressman-at- Large. After his election, Mrs. Logan returned to 
Washington and has been one of the prominent figures in Wash- 
ington society ever since. 

The arduous work of the approaching campaign will find 
Mrs. Logan again exerting all her genius for the success of her 
husband, and with that the success of the Republican ticket. 
The mass of correspondence pouring in from day to day, she 
dispatches with her own hands and the aid of a stenographer. 
She also lends her presence to the numerous visits of congratula- 
tion from committees and individuals from all parts of the coun- 
try. The most zealous person for the ticket in Washington and 
also one of the persons who will work most earnestly for its suc- 
cess will be Mrs. John A. Logan. 

NOMINATING LOGAN, 

Hardly had the nomination of Blaine been announced when 
the friends of the Illinois Senator began an active canva s in 



58 

favor of his nomination for second place on the ticket. As if 
by magic, men appeared on the streets witli blue silk badges 
printed "Blaine and Logan," affixed to the lappels of their coats, 
frequent cheers were heard around the hotel lobbies for "Blaine 
and Logan," and it was evident that at short notice a boom of 
large proportions was well under way. 

The Blaine delegates, as a rule, had a very kindly feeling 
for Logan, not only because the vote of Illinois was cast solidly 
for Blaine on the fourth ballot, but because it was understood 
that in the event of an emergency Logan's supporters from the 
outset of the contest could be relied upon to go to Blaine as 
soon as Logan was out of the fight. 

AFTER THE RECESS IN THE EVENING. 

As the delegates slowly entered the hall and took their seats, 
the expressions heard upon every hand indicated Logan's nom- 
ination. The Senator, after first declining to accept, telegraphed 
Senator CoUum that he was in the hands of his friends. A 
movement of some proportions was started in favor of Gresham, 
but his supporters were disappointed by the circulation of a report 
that he would not serve if elected. 

The Convention was called to order at 8.15 p. m. At that 
hour many of the seats in the rear of the hall were unoccupied. 
Chairman Henderson invited the states to complete the list of 
members of the National Committee, and, after a few minutes 
of wrangling, Senator Plumb, of Kansas, jumped on a chair and 
demanded the regular order. Nominations for Vice-President 
were at once announced, as in order. The Convention wisely 
adopted a resolution limiting the time of making speeches to 
ten minutes, but put no limit to the number of addresses. 

When, in the call of states, Kansas was reached. Senator 
Plumb took the chair and advanced rapidly towards the stage. 

PRESENTING THE NAME. 

Facing the large audience, twirling his watch-chain with 
the fingers of his left hand and thrusting his right hand under 
the tails of his sack coat, Mr. Plumb began his speech. It 
was a Western popular, ringing address in support of the Illinois 
candidate, and when, at the climax, the name of Logan was 
uttered, the Convention rose and gave three rousing yells for 
Illinois' favorite son. 

The Pennsylvania delegation rose to its feet as enthusiastic- 
ally as the delegation from Illinois and cheered as long and as 
loudly as the delegates from any of the other States. The con- 
duct of the Convention, the warm reception given Logan's 



69 

name, pointed unerringly to his success. Houck, of Tennessee 
seconded the nomination. ' 

NAMED BY STATE AFTER STATE. 

As the talking progressed it was made apparent that Logan 
would be nominated, and the Convention from time to time 
impatiently manifested its demand for a vote. Robinson, of 
Ohio, on behalf of the Ohio delegation, seconded Logan's nom- 
ination, and moved that the rules be suspended and the nomina- 
tion made by acclamation. 

The delegates shouted for a vote ; the Chair put the question 
and declared it carried in a tone of voice so low that not one- 
half the delegates knew that it had been put. Those who heard 
the decision of the Chair supposed the nomination had been 
made, but afterwards the roll was called. State after State regis- 
tered its solid vote for Logan until Massachusetts was reached, 
when the delegation cast nineteen votes for Logan and three for 
Fairchild, of Wisconsin. The announcement of a division in 
this finicky delegation was greeted with loud hisses. When New 
York was reached, George William Curtis asked for time for 
conference. Pennsylvania cast fifty-nine votes for Logan, one 
delegate being absent. So the roll continued, every State giving 
its united vote to the candidate for Vice-President. 

After the call of territories had been completed. New York 
was again called. Curtis cast sixty votes for Logan, one for 
Foraker, and ten for Gresham. Logan received 779 votes, and 
the nomination was made unanimous. 

NOTIFYING GENERAL LOGAN. 

The committee to notify General Logan of his nomination 
for the second place on the Republican national ticket met in 
Washington, the twenty-fourth day of June, for the perfornmnce 
of their duty. They were received by the Senator and Mrs. 
Logan, and after pleasant greetings the formal address of notifi- 
cation was read by Mr. Henderson, as follows : 

Senator Logan : The gentlemen present constitute a committee of the 
Republican convention recently assembled at Chicago, charged with the duty 
of communicating to you the formal notice of your nomination by that con- 
vention as a candidate for Vice-President of the United States. 

You are not unaware of the fact that your name was presented to the 
convention and urged by a large number of the delegates as a candidate for 
President. So soon, however, as it became apparent that Mr. Blaine, your 
colleague on the ticket, was the choice of the party for that high office, your 
friends, with those of other competitors, promptly yielded their individual 
preferences to this manifest wish of the majority. 

In tendering you this nomination we are able to assure you it was made 
without opposition, and with an enthusiasm seldom witnessed in the history 
of nominating conventions. 



60 

We are gratified to know that in a career of great usefulness and dis- 
tinction you have most efficiently aided in the enactment of those measures of 
legislation and of constitutional reform which the convention found special 
cause for party congratulation. 

The principles enumerated in the platform adopted will be recognized by 
you as the same which have so long governed and controlled your political 
conduct. 

The pledges made by the party find guarantee of performance in the 
fidelity with which you have heretofore discharged every trust confided to 
your keepmg. In your election the people of this country will furnish new 
proof of the excellency of our institutions. Without wealth, without help 
from others, without any resources except those of heart, conscience, intellect, 
energy and courage, you have won a high place in the world's history, and 
secured the confidence and affections of your countrymen. Being one of the 
people, your sympathies are with the people. In civil life your chief care has 
been to better their condition, to secure their rights and perpetuate their 
liberties. 

When the government was threatened by armed treason yon entered the 
service as a private, became the commander of armies, and are now the idol 
of the citizen soldiery of the republic. Such, in the judgment of your party, 
is the candidate it has selected, and in behalf of that party we ask you to 
accept its nomination. 

At the conclusion of the address, General Logan read from 
sheets of manuscript the following brief formal acceptance of the 
nomination, promising, as will be seen, a reply at length in the 
near future : 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee : I receive 
your visit with pleasure, and accept with gratitude the sentiments you have so 
generously expressed in the discharge of the duty with which you have been 
intrusted by the national Republican convention. 

Intending to address you a formal communication shortly, in accordance 
with the recognized usage, it would be out of place to detain you at this time 
with remarks which properly belong to the official utterances of a letter of 
acceptance. 

I may be permitted to say, however, that though I did not seek the nom- 
ination of Vice-President, I accept it as a trust reposed in me by the Repub- 
lican party, to the advancement of whose broad policy upon all questions 
connected with the progress of our government and our people I have dedi- 
cated my best energies; and with this acceptance I may properly signify my 
approval of the platform of principles adopted by the convention. 

I am deeply sensible of the honor conferred upon me by my friends in 
so unanimously tendering me this nomination, and I sincerely thank them for 
this tribute. 

I am mindful of the great responsibilities attaching to the office, and if 
elected I shall enter upon the performance of its duties with the firm convic- 
tion that he who has such an unanimous support of his party friends as the 
circumstances connected with the nommation and your own words, Mr. 
Chairman, indicate, and consequently such a wealth of counsel to draw upon, 
cannot fail in the proper discharge of the duties committed to him. I tender 
you my thanks, Mr. Chairman, for the kind expressions you have made, and 
I offer you and your fellow- committeemen my most cordial greeting. 



THE PLATFORM. 



In the following manner the platform of the Republican 
party was read in the Convention at Chicago : 

Mr. Bayne, of Pennsylvania — I would like to inquire from 
the Chair whether the Committee on Resolutions is ready to 
report ? 

The Chair — The Committee on Resolutions is now ready to 
report, and if Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania, will take the chair I 
will read the report of the Committee on Resolutions. 

Mr. Grow then took the chair, and Mr. McKinley read the 
report of the Committee on Resolutions, as follows : 

The Republicans of the United States, in Convention assembled, renew 
their allegiance to the principles upon which they have triumphed in six 
successive presidential elections, and congratulate the American people on 
the attainment of so many results in legislation and administration by which 
the Republican party has, after saving the Union, done so much to render its 
institutions just, equal and beneficent — the safeguard of liberty and the 
embodiment of the best thought and highest purposes of our citizens. The 
Republican party has gained its strength by quick and faithful response to the 
demands of the people for the freedom and the equality of all men ; for a 
united nation, assuring the rights of all citizens; for the elevation of labor; 
for an honest currency ; for purity in legislation, and for integrity and account- 
ability in all departments of the Government, and it accepts anew the duty of 
leading in the work of progress and reform. 

We lament the death of President Garfield, whose sound statesmanship, 
long conspicuous in Congress, gave promise of a strong and successful admin- 
istration, a promise fully realized during the short period of his office as 
President of the United States. His distinguished success in war and in peace 
has endeared him to the hearts of the American people. 

In the administration of President Arthur we recognize a wise, conserv- 
ative and patriotic policy, under which the country has been blessed with 
remarkable prosperity, and we believe kis eminent services are entitled to and 
will receive the hearty approval of every citizen. It is the first duty of a 
good government to protect the rights and promote the interests of its own 
people; the largest diversity of industry is most productive of general pros- 
perity and of the comfort and independence of the people. 

THE TARIFF PLANK. 

We, therefore, demand that the imposition of duties on foreign imports 
shall be made, not for "revenue only," but that, in raising the requisite reve- 

61 



62 

nues for the Government, such duties shall be so levied as to afford security 
to our diversified industries and protection to the rights and wages of the 
laborer, to the end that active and intelligent labor, as well as capital, may 
have its just reward, and the laboring man his full share in the national pros- 
perity. 

Against the so-called economical system of the Democratic party, which 
would degrade our labor to the foreign standard, we enter our earnest protest; 
the Democratic party has failed completely to relieve the people of the burden 
of unnecessary taxation by a wise reduction of the surplus. 

The Republican party pledges itself to correct the inequalities of the 
tariff and to reduce the surplus, not by (he vicious and indiscriminate process 
of horizontal reduction, but by such methods as will relieve the taxpayer 
without injuring the laborer or the great productive interests of the country. 

We recognize the importance of sheep husbandry in the United States, 
the serious depression which it is now experiencing and the danger threatening 
its future prosperity; and we, therefore, respect the demands of the represent- 
atives of this important agricultural interest for a readjustment of duty upon 
foreign wool, in view that such industry shall have full and adequate pro- 
tection. 

We have always recommended the best money known to the civilized 
world, and we urge that an effort be made to unite all commercial nations in 
the establishment of the international standard, which shall fix for all the 
the relative value of gold and silver coinage. 

The regulation of commerce with foreign nations and between the States 
js one of the most important prerogatives of the general Government, and the 
Republican party distinctly announces its purpose to support such legislation 
as will fully and efficiently carry out the constitutional power of Congress over 
inter-state commerce. The principle of the public regulation of railway cor- 
porations is a wise and salutary one for the protection of all classes of the 
people, and we favor legislation that shall prevent unjust discrimination and 
excessive charges for transportation, and that shall secure to the people and 
to the railroads alike the fair and equal protection of the laws. 

PROTECTION TO LABOR. 

We favor the establishment of a national bureau of labor, the enforce- 
ment of the eight-hour law, a wise and judicious system of general education 
by adequate appropriation from the national revenues wherever the same is 
needed. 

We believe that everywhere the protection to a citizen of American birth 
must be secured to citizens by American adoption, and we favor the settlement 
of national differences by international arbitration. 

The Republican party, having its birth in a hatred of slave labor and in 
a desire that all nten may be free and equal, is unalterably opposed to placing 
our workingmen in competition with any form of servile labor, whether at 
home or abroad. In this spirit we denounce the importation of contract labor, 



63 

whether from Europe or Asia, as an offense against the spirit of American 
institutions, and we pledge ourselves to sustain the present law restricting 
Chinese immigration, and to provide such further legislation as is necessary 
to carry out its purposes. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 

The reform of the civil service, auspiciously begun under Republican 
administration, should be completed by the further extension of the reform 
system already established by law — to all the grades of the service to which 
it is applicable. The spirit and purpose of the reform should be observed in 
all executive appointments, and all laws at variance with the objects of 
existing reformed legislation should be repealed, to the end that the dangers 
of free institutions which lurk in the power of official patronage may be 
wisely and effectively avoided. 

The public lands are a heritage of the people of the United States and 
should be reserved as far as possible for small holdings by actual settlers. We • 
are opposed to the acquisition of large tracts of these lands by corporations 
or individuals, especially where such holdings are in the hands of non-resident 
aliens, and we will endeavor to obtain such legislation as will tend to correct 
this evil. 

We demand of Congress t!ie speedy forfeiture of all land grants which 
have lapsed by reason of non-compliance with acts of incorporation, in all 
cases where there has been no attempt in good faith to perform the conditions 
of such grants. 

The grateful thanks of the American people are due to the Union 
soldiers and sailors of the late war, and the Republican party stands pledged 
to suitable pensions to all who were disabled and for the widows and orphans 
of those who died in the war. The Republican party pledges itself to the 
repeal of the limitation contained in the Arrears Act of 1S79, so that all 
invalid soldiers shall share alike, and their pensions shall begin with the date 
of disability or discharge and not with the date of the application. 

REGARDING A FOREIGN POLICY. 

The Republican party favors a policy which sKall keep us from entang- 
ling alliances with foreign nations, and which shall give the right to expect 
that foreign nations shall refrain from meddling in America, and the policy 
which seeks peace can trade with all powers, but especially with those of the 
Western Hemisphere. We demand the restoration of our navy to its old-time 
strength and efficiency, that it may in any sea protect the rights of American 
citizens and the interest of American commerce, and we call upon Congress 
to remove the burdens under which American shipping has been depressed, 
so that it may again be true that we have a commerce which leaves no sea 
unexplored, and a navy which takes no law from superior force. 

Resolved, That appointments by the President to offices in the territories 
should be made from the bona Jide citizens and residents of the territories 
wherein they are to serve. 



64 

Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to enact such laws as shall 
promptly and effectually suppress the system of polygamy within our territory 
and divorce the political from the ecclesiastical power of the so-called Mormon 
Church, and that the law so enacted should be rigidly enforced by the civil 
authorities if possible, and by the military if need be. 

The people of the United States, in their organized capacity constitute a 
nation and not a mere confederacy of states. The National Government is 
supreme within the sphere of its national duty, but the states have reserved 
rights which should be faithfully maintained; each should be guarded with 
jealous care, so that the harmony of our system of government may be pre- 
served and the Union kept inviolate. The perpetuity of our institutions rests 
upon the maintenance of a free ballot, an honest count and a correct return. 
We denounce the fraud and violence practised by the Democratic party in the 
Southern States, by which the will of the voter is defeated, as dangerous to 
the preservation of free institutions, and we solemnly arraign the Democratic 
party as being the guilty recipient of the fruit of such fraud and violence. 

We extend to the Republicans of the South, regardless of their former 
party affiliations, our cordial sympathy, and pledge to them our most earnest 
efforts to promote the passage of such legislation as will secure to every 
citizen, of whatever race and color, the full and complete recognition, pos- 
session and exercise of all civil and political rights. 

Mr. Bush, of California — I move the adoption of the reso- 
hitions 

The Chair — The gentleman from California moves the 
adoption of the resolutions. The question is upon the adoption. 
Those in favor of the same will say yea, and contrary, nay. 

The resolutions were adopted unanimously. 



/^-rs/tj^fr),ly 



I»I«,IOE, 2S CEIVTS. 




LIVES 

OF 

BLAINE K^« LOGAN 





JAMES G. BLAINE. 



JOHN A. LOGAN. 



THE PEOPLE'S EDITION— BOOK OF REFERENCE. 

JAMF.S G. BLAINE — HIS BIRTHPLACE AT WEST BROWNSVILLE, PA. — BOYHOOD COLLEGB 

LIFE — TWO YEARS AT THE PHILADELPHIA BLIND INSTITUTION — EDITOR IN MAINE 

THE HOMESTEAD AT AUGUSTA, ME. — RELIGION — CAREER IN CONGRESS — SPEAKER 

OF THE HOUSE INGERSOLL'S SPEECH NOMINATING HIM FOR PRESIDENT 

IN 1876 ORIGIN OF THE TERM "PLUMED KNIGHT" WASHINGTON 

RESIDENCE SENATOR FROM MAINE — SECRETARY OF STATE — GAR- 
FIELD'S FRIEND — EULOGY ON THK DEATH OF GARFIELD — AS 
AN HISTORIAN — "TWENTY YEARS OF CONGRESS" — THE 
CONVENTION OF 1 884 — BALLOTS IN DETAIL — THE 
ELECTORAL VOTES — JUDGE WEST'S SPEECH — NO- 
TIFICATION BY CHAIRMAN HENDERSON — ETC. 
JOHN A. LOGAN — WAR RECORD — PUBLIC 
LIFE — GRANT ON LOGAN — SKETCH 
OF MRS. LOGAN — THE REPUB- 
LICAN PLATFORM OF 1 884. 




COPYRIGHT, 

E. T. HAINES & CO., Publishers, 

712 SANSOM ST., PHILADELPHIA. 

1S84. 



T^T^ 





See Page 62. 



